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Wednesday, June 11, 2008

History and Evolution of E-commerce

Have you ever go to shopping with your pajamas in the midnight?
May be you may think
of whether any shopping center is operating in the midnight. Even if there is, you will feel very embarrass shopping with your pajamas. But with the evolution of Internet, we can go for online shopping anytime and anyplace as you like even is at home with pajamas.




" Shop with anything you like even with
your pajamas and at anyplace!! "




E-commerce
(also known as Electronic Commerce) referred to any transaction of products or services over any electronic system. In other word, E-commerce is the buying and selling of products or services over the Internet or others. Today, when we need to buy something, no necessary we have to go to the shopping mall or any place. What we need to do is, switch on computer and connect to Internet. We can purchase anything we want through Internet.

Many of us think that, E-commerce is a new creation that emerges in this new era. Actually, E-commerce has been appeared few decades ago. However, it is not common. Until the early of 1970, the first extended use of form of E-commerce was introduced and it was Electronic Fund Transfer (EFT).
EFT allows us to transfer money from one bank account to another account without the transfer of money from hand to hand. For instance, instead of queuing up so long to pay bill, you can actually go for online bill payment. It can save you a lot of time!

In the late 70s, Electronic Data Interchange (EDI)
was devised. It enables companies to exchange documents such as purchase order and invoices electronically. With EDI, suppliers can also notice the stock level of their customer. When the stock level is running low, suppliers will ready to deliver stocks to their customer. It builds a paperless environment and helps companies to save up the cost for printing various documents.

Automated Teller Machines (ATM) that is very familiar to us was emerges in the 1980s. It is also forms of E-commerce. At the same time, financial institutions introduced new service which is known as telephone banking. It operates like the ATM, just that customers no need to go to ATM to perform transaction. They can perform any transaction over the telephone.

The term “E-commerce” is expanding broadly. From the 1990s onwards, E-commerce included
Enterprise Resource Planning (ERP),
data mining and data warehouse. Basically, ERP is referred to a comprehensive set of systems used in an organization that allow every department to operate as a whole. Integration achieved among departments and it helps the company to perform more effectively and efficiently.

According to world-gazetteer and Malaysian Communications and Multimedia Commission, the total population of 2007 in Malaysia was amounted to 28,294,120 and the total Internet users as at September/06
were 13,528,200. www.internetworldstats.com/asia/my.htm It indicates that there is more than 45 % of Internet user in Malaysia. There is a bright future for the growth and acceptance of E-commerce. May be few decades later, the traditional purchasing process will be very weird to our next generation. If possible, they will perform every transactions over the Internet.


Amazon.com

Amazon.com Inc is the American company which is the first company that engaged in e-commerce. It was formed and launched in 1995. It was started by selling book over the Internet. Later it diversified its business. Now, Amazon.com serves as a global shopping mall. We can buy any products we want from anyplace over the world at anytime.

eBay

eBay Inc. is another Internet company. It is also a worldwide shopping center. Besides, it also provides online auction. In eBay, we can bid for any product that we like.

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