The History and Evolution of E-commerce

E-commerce

Electronic commerce, commonly known as e-commerce, refers to the trading of products and services electronically. In other words, e-commerce allows people to buy and sell over the Internet. It covers a wide range of different types of businesses, from household products to machines used in corporations. You name it, they have it!

History and Evolution of E-commerce

• 1970s

The emergence of e-commerce started in the 1970s when Electronic Fund Transfer (EFT) and Electronic Data Interchange (EDI) were introduced. Dated back in the early 1970s, EFT had two functions: enabling banks and financial institutions to do electronic transactions among themselves or with associated businesses, as well as, payment of salaries to employees by employers. When it came to the late 1970s, EDI helped producers and distributors in cutting costs by allowing exchanges of information and documents between companies electronically.

• 1990s
During the 1990s, the Internet has been opened for commercial use. The development of Mosaic, the first point-and-click web browser, and Netscape, the first downloadable browser, had made a remarkable growth to the global Internet community technology. This was when the Internet became popular and users started to participate in the World Wide Web (WWW). This in turn resulted in the rapid growth of the use of personal computers (PCs).

Below is the summary of the evolution of e-commerce:

• 1984 – EDI was standardized so that companies could complete transactions with one another reliably.
• 1990 – The first web browser, WWW, was written by Tim Berners-Lee.
• 1992 – People first bought things over the Internet when CompuServe offered online retail products to its customers.
• 1994 – Netscape, a simple browser to surf the Internet and a protected online transaction technology called Secure Sockets Layer was introduced.
• 1995 – Amazon.com and eBay.com were launched.
• 1998 – Fast and always-on Internet service was provided to subscribers across California by using DSL, or Digital Subscriber Line.
• 1999 – Business.com published that retail spending over the Internet has reached $20 billion.
• 2000 – The dot-com bust.
• 2003 – Amazon.com posted first yearly profit.
• 2008 – US eCommerce and Online Retail sales projected to reach $204 billion, an increase of 17 percent over 2007.

In our opinion, the emergence of e-commerce indicates a significant advancement of mankind. It benefits all parties along the supply chain management from manufacturers to customers, in various ways. As the e-commerce continues to be improved, we believe that it is possible that there will be a day where everything will be just a click away and all we need to do is just sit back and click. It may not overtake the traditional method of commerce entirely, considering some limitations of the Internet; however, it would surely affect the concept of commerce significantly.