The history and evolution of E-commerce

In the beginning, the Earth was without form, and void; and darkness was on the face of the deep. Telegraph (demonstrated in 1884) spread with railroads in the mid 1800’s then Transatlantic Cables from 1857 to 1866. Until very recently, only computer people had computers started to change in the 1980’s and paradigm shift in 1995 – the World Wide Web (www). The history of this cast improving system is how information technology has transformed business processes into how it is today.

In order to prove that the best paradigm would be shopping, which I am sure is a popular method for relaxing notwithstanding women or men and could be done anytime, anywhere, even in your pyjamas! Now this brings us back to the invention of the very old notion of ‘buy and sell’ electricity, cables, computers, modems and the internet of course! Started in 1991, it was made possible to do shopping online and since then, hundreds and thousands of business started to venture into this promising approach - the E-commerce.

The meaning of electronic commerce has changed over the last 30 years. Originally, electronic commerce meant the facilitation of commercial transactions electronically, using technology such as Electronic Data Interchange (EDI) and Electronic Funds Transfer (EFT). These were both introduced in the late 1970s, allowing businesses to send commercial documents like purchase orders or invoices electronically. The growth and acceptance of credit cards, automated teller machines (ATM) and telephone banking in the 1980s were also forms of electronic commerce. Another form of e-commerce was the airline reservation system typified by Sabre in the USA and Travicom in the UK. Online shopping was invented in the UK in 1979 by Michael Aldrichand during the 1980s it was used extensively particularly by auto manufacturers such as Ford, Peugeot-Talbot, General Motors and Nissan. From the 1990s onwards, electronic commerce would additionally include enterprise resource planning systems (ERP), data mining and data warehousing.

We can’t run away from sites like Amazon.com and Ebay when talking about e-commerce. They are one of the first few internet companies to allow electronic transactions and succeed. Nowadays, the 5 largest and most famous worldwide Internet retailers are Amazon, Dell, Staples, Office Depot and Hewlett Packard. According to statistics, the most popular categories of products sold in the World Wide Web are music, books, computers, office supplies and other consumer electronics.

Lastly, e-commerce is a history of a new, virtual world which is evolving according to the customers’ advantage. The evolution of this will never end. As long as technology breaths in the air, it will continue improving for the better. E-commerce has come a long way, evolving from organizations billboards to a fully functional personalized shopping experience. Although the road was bumpy from 1994-2004, it has now become a crucial part of Internet pioneers and technology innovators.


In conclusion, e-commerce today is still at its infancy. Invisible shopping carts, annoyance-free assistance and no lines at the register and many more benefits awaits the future of e-commerce. There is a bright future for it. Besides narrowcasting, there are also services like new quantum processors that will increase the speed of computers twice as fast and HDTV’s popularity allows us to surf and shop on their television sets.






Here are the summary of years and trends for the evolution of e-commerce...



* 1984- Electronic Data Interchange or EDI was standardized through ASCX12. This guaranteed that companies would be able to complete transactions with one another reliably.

* 1992- Compuserve offers online retail products to its customers. This gives people the first chance to buy things off their computer.

* 1994- Netscape arrived. Providing users a simple browser to surf the internet and a safe online transaction technology called as Secure Sockets Layer.

* 1995- Amazon and Ebay were the 1st international companies that implemented electronic transactions.


* 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 to online.


* 1999- Retail spending over the internet reaches $20billion according to the Business.com


* 2000- The US government exended the moratorium on internet taxes until at least 2005.






References:

http://www.ecommerce-land.com/history_ecommerce.html

http://www.ecommercedevelopment-web.com/ecommerce-blog/62-history-of-e-commerce.html

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Electronic_commerce