THE ORIGIN OF ELECTRONIC COMMERCE AND ITS INNOVATIONS
Although vernacular commerce generally refers to the trade of goods and services through the Internet, a broader economic activity is included. Electronic commerce consists of company and company to company business trade, as well as internal organizational transactions that support these activities.
Electronic commerce originated in a standard for the exchange of commercial documents, such as orders or invoices, between suppliers and their commercial customers. These origins date from 1948–49 Berlin Air Blocking and Transport with a merchandise ordering system mainly by Telex . Several industries developed that system in the following decades before the first general standard in 1975 was published. The resulting standard of electronic computer to computer data (EDI) is flexible enough to handle most simple electronic commercial transactions.
With the wide adoption of the Internet and the introduction of the World Wide Web in 1991 and the first browser to access it in 1993, most electronic commerce moved to the Internet more recently, with the worldwide expansion of smartphones and accessibilityFrom rapid broadband connections to the Internet, much of electronic commerce moved to mobile devices, which also included tablets, laptops and portable products such as watches .
Electronic commerce has deeply affected everyday life and the way in which companies and governments operate. Commerce is carried out in electronic markets (or market spaces) and in the supply chains that work on the Internet-Web. Consumer -oriented markets include large electronic shopping centers (such as Amazon), consumer to consumer auction platforms (eBay, for example), multichannel retailers (such as LL Bean) and many millions of electronic retailers. Alibaba and other companies have created company company to company. The so -called shared economy allows a more efficient use of resources, as Airbnb does with online rents of private residences. Almost instant access to services is available through platforms at the request that they offer, for example, transport (for example, Uber), computer and storage resources provided by cloud service providers, and medical and legal advice. The mass customization of products sold online, such as clothing and vehicles, became common. Electronic currencies (or cryptocurrencies) as Bitcoin came into play as a liquidation medium. Semi -permanent supply chains allow a central company (such as Dell).
Social network sites, such as Facebook, support a wide variety of individual relationships and are the site of the so -called social trade, promoted by opinions and comments shared by participants such as Electronic Boca. Online communities unite participants who wish to share their knowledge, forge lasting relationships or present themselves in a broad forum. These communities became a powerful source of value creation by people who together and for long periods of time, for example, produce open source software or continually replenish an online encyclopedia.
The web is also an interactive medium of human communication that complements, and often replaces, the traditional media. The hypermedia nature of the web, with the interconnection of multimedia content available in globally distributed sites, allows the creation of new types of multimedia products, often offered for free. These new media include blogs, video aggregators (such as YouTube), social networks (built with Wiki technology, for example) and custom electronic newspapers. As with all media, this aspect of the web leads to its use in marketing. Web advertising covers from graphic ads on websites to keyword ads shown to information search engines that use search engines, such as Google . Mobile advertising is expanding rapidly due to the extensive use of smartphones . Marketing specialists have at their disposal a deep knowledge of individuals due to the electronic compilation of multifaceted profiles as people sail on the web. In particular, the promotion of goods and services based on the location can be enabled in mobile trade. The ability to obtain advertisements generates several business models (for example, search engines) and generates incremental income for other businesses, since its customers access their websites or use mobile applications and can be exposed to advertising messages.
Among the innovations that have contributed to the growth of electronic commerce are electronic directories and search engines to find information on the web;Software agents, or bots, which act autonomously to locate goods and services;systems that recommend products to users based on their profile;and digital authentication services that support identities through the Internet. These intermediary services facilitate the sale of goods (in reality the delivery of goods in the case of information), the provision of services such as banking, ticket reserves and transactions in the stock market, and the delivery of education and entertainment todistance.
Companies usually implement private Internet -type networks (Intranets) to share information and collaborate within the company, usually isolated from the surrounding general Internet through computer security systems known as Firewalls . Collaborating companies also usually trust extranets that allow communicated communication through the Internet.
Security is a central concern in electronic commerce. Includes the authentication of the parties, the authorization to access the given resources, the confidentiality of communication and the assurance of the integrity of the message. Many of these objectives are achieved with a public key infrastructure, a system of specialized organizations and computerized means to provide electronic certificates that authenticize companies and, if desired, to people;provide encryption and deciphered keys for communication;and provide protocols (algorithms) for safe communication. However, absolute security is not an attainable objective. Many spectacular data violations are testimony to this, as well as the abandonment of this vital aspect of electronic commerce.
Security underlies another important aspect of electronic commerce, that of privacy. The mass assembly and the use of individual profiles that reflect the activity for many years and in many personal activities raise concerns. Until now, these concerns are only partially addressed through legislation, self-regulation and public pressure that can find instant social amplification on the Internet.
Several important phenomena are associated with electronic commerce. The role of geographical distance in the formation of commercial relations is reduced. Barriers to enter many types of businesses are lower, since it is relatively economical to start a retail website or a community of producers. Some traditional commercial intermediaries are being replaced by their electronic equivalents or are becoming completely expendable. (For example, given that airlines have published information about rates and enabled ticket issuance directly through the Internet, store travel agencies have decreased). Product prices are generally lower on the web, a reflection not only of the lower costs of doing electronic business but also the ease of comparing purchases in cyberspace . Consumers greatly benefit from the availability of products that are bought only on rare occasions and that would not be stored in physical stores (the so -called long tail effect).
New business models always arise and pivot (modify) as the market reaction can be measured rapidly. Since the incremental cost of producing a good content unit (as a software product) is close to zero, freemium business models are often used in the content domain: the basic product is free, premium versions are charged. A new form of corporate cooperation known as a virtual company has flourished, which is actually a network of companies whose information systems are integrated through the Internet, and each company performs some of the necessary processes to manufacture a product or provide a service. It attracts broad audiences to contribute their work, ideas or funds in crowdsourcing initiatives.
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