E-commerce is an online purchase or sale transaction. E-commerce is based on technologies such as mobile commerce, electronic funds transfer, supply chain management, Internet marketing, online transaction processing, electronic data interchange (EDI) systems Inventory management and automated data collection systems. Modern e-commerce typically uses the World Wide Web for at least part of the transaction lifecycle, although it can also use other technologies such as e-mail. E-commerce (e-commerce or EC) is the purchase and sale of goods and services, or the transmission of funds or data, through an electronic network, mainly the Internet. These business transactions occur either from business to business, from business to consumer, from consumer to consumer or from consumer to business. The terms e-commerce and e-commerce are often used interchangeably.
E-commerce companies may employ some or all of the following:
• Online shopping websites for retail sales directly to consumers
• Provide or participate in online markets, which process third-party sales from company to consumer or consumer to consumer
• Buying and selling company-to-business
• Collection and use of demographic data through web contacts and social media
• Electronic interchange of data between companies (B2B)
• Marketing to prospective and established customers by email or fax (for example, with newsletters)
• Participate in the launch of new products and services
• Online financial exchanges for exchanges or commercial purposes
History of e-commerce
The beginnings of e-commerce date back to the 1960s, when companies began using electronic data interchange (EDI) to share business documents with other companies. In 1979, the American National Standards Institute developed ASC X12 as a universal standard for companies to share documents over electronic networks. After the number of individual users who shared electronic documents with each other grew in the 1980s, in the 1990s eBay and Amazon's uprising revolutionized the e-commerce industry. Consumers can now purchase endless quantities of online items from both typical brick and mortar stores with e-commerce capabilities and with each other.
E-commerce applications
E-commerce is carried out using a variety of applications such as e-mail, online catalogs and shopping carts, EDI, File Transfer Protocol and web services. This includes business-to-business and outreach activities, such as the use of email for unsolicited advertisements (generally seen as spam) to consumers and other business prospects, as well as to send electronic newsletters to subscribers. More companies now try to attract consumers directly online, using tools like digital coupons, social media marketing and targeted ads.
The benefits of e-commerce include uninterrupted availability, speed of access, wide availability of consumer goods and services, ease of access and international reach. Their perceived disadvantages include sometimes limited customer service, consumers not being able to see or touch a product before the purchase, and the waiting time required to ship the product.
The e-commerce market continues to grow:
online sales accounted for more than a third of total US retail sales growth in 2015, according to data from the United States Department of Commerce. Internet sales totaled $ 341.7 billion in 2015, an increase of 14.6% over 2014. E-commerce with mobile devices and social media is also on the rise: Internet Retailer reported that mobile represented 30% Of all e-commerce activities in 2015 And according to Invesp, 5% of all online spending was through social commerce in 2015, with Facebook, Pinterest and Twitter providing most of the referrals.
The increase in e-commerce forces IT staff to go beyond infrastructure design and maintenance and consider numerous customer-related aspects such as privacy and security of consumer data. When developing IT systems and applications to accommodate e-commerce activities.