Discuss E-Commerce: Its Development and Future Perspectives
Essayist
Institutional Affiliation
Discuss E-Commerce: Its Development and Future Perspectives
Electronic commerce (e-commerce) is a type of a transaction where a buyers and a seller meet and perform all processes in business, online. It starts from a point where customers are attracted to products or services that sellers display online on their websites. Alternatively, the products and services are sometimes displayed on behalf of the sellers by affiliate market networks (Qin, 2007). E-commerce system is designed in a way that everything is computerized; thus, no customers’ attendants need to watch what a customer is doing. While in the website, the customers can make orders for the offers that have enticed them. In other words, e-commerce is a trading point with no cashiers, customers’ attendants, and security personnel, to ensure customers get proper services. For now, this system is just two decades old and there are expectations that it will surpass its current performance in years to come.
In 1995, e-commerce was adopted for the first time in the United State of America (USA). It was at that time that the USA government realized its potential in facilitating business activities and growing the economy. Ten years later, economic experts estimated that e-commerce had grown to a magnitude of a trillion US dollars (Mohapatra, 2012). As it stands now, e-commerce’s operations are eighty percent based in the USA and Europe because these two regions have effective website technologies and secure online payment systems available to most people there. For instance, it is easier for an American to buy an academic material online than purchasing a printed copy of the same from a bookshop (Mohapatra, 2012). This is because they attain the academic material in electronic form, which is easier to keep and carry around. Additionally, in e-commerce, money used in the transactions is in electronic form, thus, saving buyers from carrying bulky amounts of money with them. What they need is a loaded VISA card, MasterCard, or PayPal. The development of e-commerce has also reduced time that was previously being wasted in queues by customers in trade centers waiting for services. On the other hand, it has facilitated privacy to those who do not like being watched in public places buying stuffs. Therefore, e-commerce is no doubt a better system than the conventional system of trade.
Predicting the future of anything is never an easy task, but it has usually been done by looking at the past trends. In this case, the same applies to e-commerce. Considering facts, e-commerce was introduced in 1995 and within a span of ten years; it had achieved a growth of a trillion US dollars despite the fact that it was mostly being used in the USA (Qin, 2007). Fifteen years from the day of its introduction in the USA, it had spread to all other continents and its productivity had grown to more than three trillion US dollars (Mohapatra, 2012). Additionally, complimentary systems such as electronic payment systems have also grown massively and are now easily accessible than they were in the beginning. Analytically, e-commerce is going to conquer the business world in a few years time because it is boosted by technologies, which are also growing at faster rates.
In summary, e-commerce has developed beyond the expectations of many people. It started from the USA but now it has gone global and it is continuing to penetrate to more regions. Just like any common household commodity, it is predicted that in the future, e-commerce is going to be a common name. Other than that, e-commerce has truly moved to better heights and is still scaling higher.
References
Mohapatra, S. (2012). E-commerce Strategy: Text and Cases. New York: Springer.
Qin, Z. (2007). Introduction to E-Commerce. Berlin: Springer Berlin.
