e-commerce

Ecommerce started when Internet become easily available to the public. Initially, ecommerce meant the process of commercial transactions electronically with the help of technologies providers such as Electronic Data Interchange (EDI) and Electronic Funds Transfer (EFT). These technologies appeared in the late 1970s.

The growth and acceptance of credit cards, automated teller machines (ATM) and telephone banking in the 1980s were also forms of electronic commerce. From the 1990s onwards, electronic commerce would additionally include enterprise resource planning systems (ERP), data mining and data warehousing.

Internet popularity heightens in 1994. Security protocols such as HTTP and DSL were sufficiently developed in end of 90s to allow for speedy access and persistent connection.

Huge number of business companies in the United States and Western Europe represented their services in the World Wide Web (www) during early 2000s. People began to define ecommerce as the process of purchasing of available goods and services over the Internet using secure connections and electronic payment services.

Although the dot-com collapse in 2000 led to unfortunate results and many of ecommerce companies disappeared, the “brick and mortar” retailers recognized the advantages of ecommerce and began to add such capabilities to their web sites.

Amazon and Ebay which were among the first Internet companies to allow electronic transactions. Currently there are 5 largest and most famous worldwide Internet retailers: Amazon, Dell, Staples, Office Depot and Hewlett Packard.

According to statistics, the most popular categories of products sold in the World Wide Web are music, books, computers, office supplies and other consumer electronics.

Reference:
http://www.ecommerce-land.com/history_ecommerce.html
http://www.ecommerce-journal.com/articles/electronic_commerce_aka_e_commerce_history