Nowadays,
the word e-commerce is not yet an unusual term to us. It becomes popular in
line with technological developments. E-commerce is the buying and selling of
goods and services, or the transmitting of funds or data, over an electronic
network, primarily the Internet. It can be divided into for categories: B2B,
B2C, C2B and C2C. We can see the rapid growth in e-commerce within the years
because of shoppers continue to shift their spending from physical stores to
online ones. Increased use of smartphones and tablet computers, greater
merchandise selection and new business models, such as daily-deals sites such
as Groupon, are also the key factors of its growth.
Business Managers of today are living in challenging times. Business targets had never been stiffer, work pressure and managing the complexities of competition is keeping them on their toes all the time. Today, success or failure of a business and the Organisation is dependent wholly upon the Organisation’s ability to be flexible and to respond to the external changing environment. Only those who are able to adapt to the changes and those who are able to assimilate and learn from tomorrow’s technology are able to run the race. Digital technology has changed the rules of business game.
Today, individuals have the power of internet in their hands. If one wants to book an airline ticket, it is pretty easy to do so online and it takes only a few minutes to complete the entire transaction of looking at the options, selecting the best priced deal, making an online payment and printing the confirmed ticket. As compared to talking to a travel agent for an hour and several calls, online booking is definitely a better deal. Take the case of courier industry. One can book a consignment to any location in the world and you can use the track and trace feature on the web to track the status of your parcel at any time. This feature makes a huge impact to a business which is sending some important and time bound cargo or document to another location. Look at how easy it has become to configure a computer that you want and order it online in an instant.
A timeline (starting from 2000-2014) for the development of e-commerce:
- 2000: The dot-com bust.
- 2001: Alibaba.com achieved profitability in December 2001.
- 2002: eBay acquires PayPal for $1.5 billion.[14] Niche retail companies Wayfair and NetShops are founded with the concept of selling products through several targeted domains, rather than a central portal.
- 2003: Amazon.com posts first yearly profit.
- 2004: DHgate.com, China's first online B2B transaction platform, is established, forcing other B2B sites to move away from the "yellow pages" model.[15]
- 2007: Business.com acquired by R.H. Donnelley for $345 million.[16]
- 2009: Zappos.com acquired by Amazon.com for $928 million.[17] Retail Convergence, operator of private sale website RueLaLa.com, acquired by GSI Commerce for $180 million, plus up to $170 million in earn-out payments based on performance through 2012.[18]
- 2010: Groupon reportedly rejects a $6 billion offer from Google. Instead, the group buying websites went ahead with an IPO on 4 November 2011. It was the largest IPO since Google.
- 2011: Quidsi.com, parent company of Diapers.com, acquired by Amazon.com for $500 million in cash plus $45 million in debt and other obligations.[21] GSI Commerce, a company specializing in creating, developing and running online shopping sites for brick and mortar businesses, acquired by eBay for $2.4 billion.[22]
- 2013: US eCommerce and Online Retail holiday sales reach $46.5 billion, up 10 percent.[23]
- 2014: Overstock.com processes over $1 million in Bitcoin sales.[24] India’s e-commerce industry is estimated to have grown more than 30% from a year earlier to $12.6 billion in 2013.[25] US eCommerce and Online Retail sales projected to reach $294 billion, an increase of 12 percent over 2013 and 9% of all retail sales.[26] Alibaba Group has the largest Initial public offering ever, worth $25 billion.
Sources:Wikipedia
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