History and Evolution of E-Commerce

Nowadays, e-commerce is a very popular activity in our life. But did you all know the history and evolution of e-commerce?? I think most of us will not know exactly what it means and the history of it. So I would like to share about the history and evolution of e-commerce with all of you through this blog.

E-commerce is known as electronic commerce. The meaning of e-commerce has been change due to the growth of technology. In the late 1970s, e-commerce meant the facilitation of commercial transactions electronically, using technology such as Electronic Data Interchange (EDI) and Electronic Funds Transfer (EFT) to send commercial documents like purchase orders or invoices electronically. In 1980s, the acceptance of of credit cards, automated teller machines (ATM) and telephone banking in the 1980s were also forms of electronic commerce. From the 1990s, electronic commerce include enterprise resource planning systems (ERP), data mining and data warehousing.

Thus, nowadays e-commerce consists of the buying and selling of products or services over electronic system such as the Internet, World Wide Web or others computer networks. This activity can be performed due to the growth of technology.

In around 1994, Netscape introduced a browser program whose graphical presentation significantly eased the use of computer communication for all kinds of computer activity, including e-commerce.

Then, the well-known website that is Amazon.com was launched in 1995 by Jeff Bezos. Amazon.com is a website that began with selling books and until now it has been selling varios of products. In the same time, Dell also began to use internet for commercial transaction. Besides that, eBay was also been launched and founded by computer programmer Pierre Omidyar as AuctionWeb. These are the successful websites that still exist til now although in the beginning these websites faced some lossess and problems. But its have been overcome through the growth of the technology. On the other hand, the are some failure websites that launched in the same time such as dot-com bubble.

In 1998, DSL or Digital Subscriber Line, provides fast, always-on Internet service to subscribers across California. This prompts people to spend more time, and money. The e-commerce business-to-business, business-to-customer and customer-to-customer activities have continue to grown until the twenty-first centuries. By 2001, electronic commerce had not grown to levels anticipated in the late 1990s. Nowadays, buyers were expected to change habits and make the shift from going to a store to shopping on a computer.

References:

1. http://www.vipgo.net/article105.html
2. http://newmedia.medill.northwestern.edu/courses/nmpspring01/brown/Revstream/history.htm
3. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Electronic_commerce
4. http://www.answers.com/electronic+commerce?cat=biz-fin