The history and evolution of e-commerce

E-commerce becomes popular because it is a combination of the networking of business communities and the digitalization of business information. It also acts important roles in our lives such as we can shop or meeting anytime even we are wearing pajamas.

Trace back to the previous technology, e-commerce is still on the invention of vary old notion of “sell and buy”, electricity, cables, computers, modems, and the internet. During the 1970’s, the technology allowing this kind of commerce took hold and grew steadily throughout the 1980’s, the credit cards started to become widely use.

In 1984, EDI (electronic data interchange) is widely viewed as the beginning of e-commerce which had guaranteed that companies would be able to complete transactions with one another reliably. Unfortunately, online business stills not a reality for the average person who includes ATM and credit card transactions as well as the ability to do e-billing and e-banking. In 1991’s, thousands of business have taken up residence at web sites when the internet was opened to commercial use.

However, it wasn’t until the development of the Internet that e-commerce started looking like the type of business that we know today. For most people talking about it now, the term refers to transactions, which take place completely through the web. Computer security was strengthened enough to make consumers and businesses feel comfortable with conducting these types of transactions online. Combined with the fact that web design was improving and the speed of the Internet was increasing, e-commerce had a platform for development.

For example, Amazon.com, Inc. is the first and the most famous e-commerce companies which conduct the business to establish an affiliate marketing program and sell products such as electronics, software, MP3s, video games, footwear, health products, etc over the internet. Through this, people are able to sell or buy any items through internet without needing a whole business behind them.

For one thing, many people still didn’t have high speed internet in their homes so online shopping tended to be limited to what could be done in the workplace. Additionally, many small businesses invested too much money in creating a web presence and they weren’t able to sustain that development due to lack of funds. Today, the average person not only has a home computer but also has the high speed internet connection that lets him or her move easily between web pages. This makes it easy to do comparison-shopping online. More importantly, the availability of high speed internet has increased the ability of people to work from home.

However, the technology nowadays is rapidly growing. Both IT as well as business field are improving the skill and knowledge that needed to achieve goal, “make our living easier and convenience”.