Week Four

E-Commerce

Electronic Commerce is a type of industry where the buying and selling of products or services is conducted over electronic systems such as the Internet and other computer networks (also known as e-commerce). There are some types of e-commerce: E-tailing or "virtual storefronts" on websites with online catalogs, Business-to-business buying and selling, Business-to-consumer Buying or Selling, Electronic Data Interchange (EDI), the business-to-business exchange of data, E-mail and fax and their use as media for reaching prospective and established customers (for example, with newsletters).

Picture 1

Brief History of E-commerce:

• 1971/1972: The ARPANET is used to arrange a cannabis sale between students at the Stanford Artificial Intelligence Laboratory and the Massachusetts Institute of Technology 
• 1979: Michael Aldrich demonstrates the first online shopping system
• 1984: CompuServe launches the Electronic Mall in the USA and Canada. It is the first comprehensive electronic commerce service
• 1992: Book Stacks Unlimited in Cleveland opens a commercial sales website (www.books.com) selling books online with credit card processing
• 1995: Jeff Bezos launches Amazon.com and the first commercial-free 24-hour
• 1996: IndiaMART B2B marketplace established in India.
• 1996: ECPlaza B2B marketplace established in Korea.
• 1999: Alibaba Group is established in China
• 2000 onwards: DHgate.com, groupon, business.com, zappos.com, diapers.com

A typical e-commerce website should contain:

1. About Us
2. Contact Us
3. Site Map
4. Why buy from us
5. Testimonial
6. Legal information

Some Types of E-commerce bussiness Model:

1. Brokerage (example: eBay)
2. Advertising (example: Google)
3. Infomediary
4. Merchant (example: amazon.com)
5. Manufacture (example: Dell)
6. Affiliate
7. Community (example: wikipedia)
8. Subscription (example: iTunes)
9. Utility

Image Source:
Picture 1: http://tomuse.com/wp-content/uploads/2009/10/online-shopping-cart-software-ecommerce-web-store-services.png