Kalakota and Whinston (1997) define ecommerce as ‘the buying and selling of information, products and services via computer networks, the computer networks primarily being the Internet. Others use the term to encompass not only the buying and selling but also the use of Internet technologies, such as email and intranets, to exchange or share information either within the firm itself or with external stakeholders.
A broad definition of e-commerce entails the use of computers and telecommunications to facilitate the trade of goods and services. From this definition, e-commerce emerged in the 1960s, with automated payment systems and telephone services. Since then, e-business such as telephone banking, credit card services, fax orders, Electronic Funds Transfer and Electronic Data Interchange have been developed, culminating recently with the use of the Web and the Internet.
Today it includes activities more precisely termed “Web commerce”—the purchase of goods and services over the World Wide Web via secure servers (note HTTPS , a special server protocol that encrypts confidential ordering data for customer protection) with e- shopping carts and with electronic pay services, like credit card pay authorizations (Eddie, 2002). Adoption of e-commerce by SMEs in UK A study by Elizabeth, Hugh and Andrew (2002) on Adoption of e-commerce by Small and Medium scale Enterprises established four distinct clusters of adoption.
A set of four sequential stages through which firms appeared to surpass during the adoption of commerce, were established. The firms in the first cluster are currently developing their first e-commerce services; the second adoption cluster is using e-mail to communicate with customers, suppliers and employees. Firms at the third level of adoption have information-based websites operating and are developing on-line ordering facilities.
The highly advanced adopters have on-line ordering in operation and are developing online payment capabilities. Features of E-commerce and its transformation The concept of online shopping was first invented and introduced in 1979 by UK based Michael Aldrich. The early technological developments in e-commerce appears to be a fairytale like, yet a lot of research, manpower, experiment have been put in to bring the best possible e-commerce solutions out.
According to Eddie (2009) broadband has made data transfer a quicker business, but quite a number of potential customers still use dial-up connection. Being one of the most discussed topics in business today, E-commerce is already leading to the reshaping of customer and supplier relationships, the streamlining of business processes and, in some cases, even the restructuring of whole industries.
E-commerce activities includes; providing information on company and its goods or services, taking orders, receiving payment, delivery, after sales service, identifying new inventory suppliers, ordering and payment of inventory purchasing, communication with customers or suppliers, internal communication between employees, document and design exchange with customers or suppliers, external information search, advertising and recruitment Read This
