e-cOmMerc3: The History and Evolution of E-Commerce

Electronic Commerce is a type of business model and enables people buying, selling, transferring, or exchanging products, services or information via computer networks 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.

However, in 1984 the Accredited Standards Committee (ASC) X12 develops standards for cross-industry electronic exchange of business information. These standards became stable and reliable in transferring large amounts of transactions.

In the early 1990s, when the internet was opened to commercial use and users began participate in the World Wide Web (WWW), e-commerce application rapidly expanded so that a large number of dot-com also appeared.

In year 1992, one of a America website name Compuserve has offers online retail products to its customers. This gives people the first chance to buy things off their computer.

During year 1994, Marc Andreessen began the creation of a browser by the name of Mosaic which was then adapted into the Netscape browser. It providing users a simple browser to surf the internet and a safe online transaction technology called Secure Sockets Layer.

History of ecommerce is unthinkable without Amazon and Ebay which were among the first Internet companies to allow electronic transactions in the year 1995. Currently there are 5 largest and most famous worldwide Internet retailers: Amazon, Dell, Staples, Office Depot and Hewlett Packard. One more company which has contributed much to the process of ecommerce development is Dell. The company’s unique strategy of selling goods over the World Wide Web with no retail outlets and no middlemen has been admired by a lot of customers and imitated by a great number of ecommerce businesses. The key factor of Dell’s success is that Dell.com enables customers to choose and to control.

In year 1998, development of security protocols such as HTTP and Digital Subsciber Line (DSL) which allowed rapid access and a persistent connection to the internet. In fact, people will spend more time online. In year 1999, the e-commerce shifted from business-to-consumer to business-to-business. According to Business.com, Retail spending over the Internet reaches $20 billion.

In year 2000, there is a dot-com burst and make numbers of e-commerce companies shut down. Not only that, it created a stock market bubble (in financial markets term applied to arise or boom in the share prices of stocks of a particular industry). The bubble caused an overvaluation of the company.

In year 2001, the e-commerce shifted from business-to-business to business-to-exchange. After the dot-com collapse in the end of 2001, people learn from failure and make the largest from e-commerce, B2B model had around $700 billion in transaction.