E-Commerce: Its Development and Future Perspectives (Essay Sample)

E-COMMERCE: ITS DEVELOPMENT AND FUTURE PERSPECTIVES.
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Definition of E-commerce
E-commerce also referred to us electronic commerce, can be defined as: the use of the Web and the Internet to carry out business transactions. A more comprehensive definition would be: Electronic commerce involves digitally enabled commerce transactions between and among businesses and individuals. E-commerce differs from e-business in that no an exchange of value across businesses or individual or any commercial transaction that takes place in electronic business E-business is the digital enablement of carrying out transactions inside a firm and therefore there is no transfer of value across organisations or to individuals. E-business becomes e-commerce when there is a transfer of value across organisations.[Faramarz, Damanpour , and Jamshid Ali ,Damanpour,. "E-business e-commerce evolution: perspective and strategy." (Managerial finance 27, no. 7, 2001), 16-33.]
Development of E-commerce
There are several stages involved in the growth and development of E-commerce, this stages include, innovation, consolidation and reinvention. The initial stage innovation took place between the years 1995 and 2000 and at this juncture there were ideal vision of market as there was a good flow of quality information between the buyers and the sellers. This however did not see the full fulfilment of the ideal visions. E- Commerce enter its second phase in 2001 which is the consolidation stage, at this level more firms in the market started embracing the use of Web to enhance their trade activities. Web 1.0 was thus created and it was referred to as the ‘readable’ web.[Alemayehu, Molla, and Paul S, Licker. "Perceived e-readiness factors in e-commerce adoption: an empirical investigation in a developing country." (International Journal of Electronic Commerce 10, no. 1, 2005), 83-110.]
There less emphasis on creating new brands as the firms concentrated much on the integration of Web use to promote their business activities. In the year 2006 E-commerce entered into in third phase which is the reinvention stage. At this juncture social networks, use of Web 2.0 application reinvigorated electronic commerce and facilitated the development of new business models. Today, internet marketers are no longer waiting to adapt to the next great breakthrough the internet gives them, instead, they are taking a positive approach in creating the next internet evolution, Web 3.0, which is the ‘Transcendent’ Web![Damanpour and Damanpour "E-business e-commerce revolution" 28.]
The future of E-commerce
The purpose of Web 3.0 in electronic commerce is to capitalise on the expansive social network. Through new method that help in interpretation of internet users behaviours it has now become possible to analyse specific interests of a buyer and give the personalised e-commerce buying experience. Unlike the current target advertising which for example, detects that a certain shopper performed an internet search for wedding suit, which results to too many advertisements of non-specific wedding suits. In a Web 3.0 case, targeted advertisements may result in non-traditional wedding suits for plus size, middle aged men, this fits better an individual shopping needs and makes the advertisements far more useful and could lead to a sale transaction.[Molla, and Licker. "E-readiness factors in e-commerce" 94.]
For such revolution in how business...