E-commerce: The history and evolution of E-commerce

What is commerce?

Commerce is a division of trade or production which deals with the exchange of goods and services from producer to final customer. It comprises the trading of something of economic value such as goods,services,information or money between two or more entities.

What is e-commerce?

Electronic commerce, commonly known as e-commerce or eCommerce, consists of the buying and selling of the buying and selling of product or services over electronic system such as the internet. A wide variety of commerce is conducted in this way, spurring and drawing on innovations in electronic processing,electronic data interchange(EDI), inventory management systems ans automated data collection system. E-commerce can be business to business(B2B) and business to customer(B2C).

History of e-commerce

The history of E-commerce is a history of how Information Technology has transformed business processes. It provides with a detailed explanation of the stages which E-commerce has actually evolved and began to be used as a popular online mean of economic exchange where it refers to the online transaction of goods. There have been several key steps in the history of e-commerce.

At first, the term ecommerce meant the process of execution of commercial transactions electronically with the help of the leading technologies such as Electronic Data Interchange (EDI) and Electronic Funds Transfer (EFT) which gave an opportunity for users to exchange business information and do electronic transactions. The ability to use these technologies appeared in the late 1970s and allowed business companies and organizations to send commercial documentation electronically.

The next major step occurred in 1992s where the Mosaic web-browser becomes the first ‘point and click’ browser. The Mosaic browser was quickly adapted into a downloadable browser, and Netscape which allowed easier access to E-commerce. Moreover, the development of DSL was allowed quicker access and a persistent connection to the Internet.

The development of Red Hat Linux was also another major step in E-commerce growth. Linux gave users another choice in a platform other then Windows that was reliable and open-source.

Evolution of E-commerce

Evolution of E-commerce can be attributed to a combination of regulatory reform and technological innovation. Through internet which played an important role in evolution that appeared in the late 1960s, E-commerce of today took off with the arrival of World Wide Web and browsers in early 1990s. The liberalization of the telecommunications sector and innovations such as optic fiber and DSL which has helped to expand the volume and capacity of communications that helped in the process of rapid growth. As a result, the barriers to entry and engage in E-commerce have fallen rapidly.

Let’s have a look into how gradual technical development attributed to the growth of ecommerce:

* In 1960’s Electronic Data Interchange (EDI) was formulated. This is a set of standard instructions to interchange data and to carry out business deals electronically.

* In 1969 ARPANET, was developed by Americas department of defence for researching new reliable networks and later this enhanced into Internet that was purely used as a research tool for nearly 20yrs.

* In 1991, Tim Berners-Lee developed World Wide Web at CERN that started the first Internet transaction. These technology supported exchange of data that was in text format only.

* Later in 1993, Mosiac was developed by Marc Andreessen, this is the first graphic web browser launched to interchange text and graphics and loads of people started downloading it.

* Netscape the most successful graphic browser was later developed by Marc Andreessen. On the other hand, Microsoft came up with Microsoft Internet Explorer.

* Later in 1998 DSL was launched into the market that provided much faster access and persistent connection to the internet. AOL swamped the market and had about 1.2 billion sales over a period of 10 weeks from online sales.

* Another major improvement in ecommerce came with the development of Linux a platform more reliable and open source that allowed itself to be customized by its users and put a tough competition to Microsoft that compelled it develop much better versions of networking.

* Amazon and EBay were the first International companies that implemented electronic transactions. Initial public offerings by Netscape, Amazon, and EBay had tremendous success and almost every one started implementing business on internet.