E L E C T R O N I C C O M M E R C E :
T H E S E C O N D W A V E
* From humble beginnings in the mid-1990s, electronic commerce grew rapidly until 2000, when a major downturn occurred * The popular media published endless news stories describing how the “dot-com boom” had turned into the “dot-com bust * Beginning in 2003, electronic commerce began to show signs of new life. Companies that had survived the downturn were not only seeing growth in sales again, but many of them were showing profits. * In the general economic recession that started in 2008, electronic commerce was hurt less than most of the economy
Electronic Commerce and Electronic Business: * To many people, the term “electronic commerce” means shopping on the part of the Internet called the World Wide Web (the Web). * electronic commerce (ore-commerce) also includes many other activities, such as businesses trading with otherbusinesses and internal processes that companies use to support their buying, selling, hiring, planning, and other activities * Internet technologies include the Internet, the World Wide Web, and other technologies such as wireless transmissions on mobile telephone networks. * Companies that operate only online are often called dot-com or pure dot-com businesses to distinguish them from companies that operate in physical locations (solely or together with online operations).
Categories of Electronic Commerce: * The five general electronic commerce categories are business-to-consumer, business-to-business, business processes, consumer-to-consumer, and business-to-government * Most three used are Consumer shopping on the Web, often called business-to-consumer (or B2C) * Transactions conducted between businesses on the Web, often called business-to-business (or B2B) * Transactions and business processes in which companies, governments, and other organizations use Internet technologies to support selling and purchasing activities * Businesses often have entire departments devoted to negotiating purchase transactions with their suppliers. These departments are usually named supply management or procurement. Thus, B2B electronic commerce is sometimes called e-procurement. * Some people include these activities in the B2B category; others refer to them as underlying or supporting business processes. * In terms of dollar volume and number of transactions, B2B electronic commerce is much greater than B2C electronic commerce. However, the number of supporting business processes is greater than the number of all B2C and B2B transactions combined. * For more than 70 years, business researchers have been studying the ways people behave in businesses. * an activity is a task performed by a worker in the course of doing his or her job. * A transaction is an exchange of value, such as a purchase, a sale,or the conversion of raw materials into a finished product. * By recording transactions, accountants help business owners keep score and measure how well they are doing. * All transactions involve at least one activity,