E-commerce is where people "BUY" & "SELL" the products on internet. Today its not only limited to products buying or selling, it has evolved gradually and as per Darwin's theory today fittest websites have survived. E-commerce consists of Electronic funds transfer, Supply chain Management, online transaction processing, Electronic data interchange, data processing and management and Inventory management systems. The back bone of e-commerce is WWW (world wide web) and mobile technology.
Timeline of E-commerce:
- 1995: Jeff Bezos launches Amazon.com and the first commercial-free 24 hour, internet-only radio stations, Radio HK and NetRadio start broadcasting. Dell and Cisco begin to aggressively use Internet for commercial transactions. eBay is founded by computer programmer Pierre Omidyar as AuctionWeb.
- 1996: IndiaMART B2B marketplace established in India.
- 1996: ECPlaza B2B marketplace established in Korea.
- 1996: Sellerdeck, formerly Actinic, the UK's first PC/LAN e-commerce platform established.
- 1998: Electronic postal stamps can be purchased and downloaded for printing from the Web.
- 1999: Alibaba Group is established in China. Business.com sold for US $7.5 million to eCompanies, which was purchased in 1997 for US $149,000. The peer-to-peer filesharing softwareNapster launches. ATG Stores launches to sell decorative items for the home online.
- 2000: The dot-com bust.
- 2001: Alibaba.com achieved profitability in December 2001.
- 2002: eBay acquires PayPal for $1.5 billion. Niche retail companies Wayfair and NetShops are founded with the concept of selling products through several targeted domains, rather than a central portal.
- 2003: Amazon.com posts first yearly profit.
- 2004: DHgate.com, China's first online b2b transaction platform, is established, forcing other b2b sites to move away from the "yellow pages" model.
- 2007: Business.com acquired by R.H. Donnelley for $345 million.
- 2009: Zappos.com acquired by Amazon.com for $928 million. Retail Convergence, operator of private sale website RueLaLa.com, acquired by GSI Commerce for $180 million, plus up to $170 million in earn-out payments based on performance through 2012.
- 2010: Groupon reportedly rejects a $6 billion offer from Google. Instead, the group buying websites went ahead with an IPO on November 4, 2011. It was the largest IPO since Google.
- 2011: Quidsi.com, parent company of Diapers.com, acquired by Amazon.com for $500 million in cash plus $45 million in debt and other obligations. GSI Commerce, a company specializing in creating, developing and running online shopping sites for brick and mortar businesses, acquired by eBay for $2.4 billion.
- 2012: US eCommerce and Online Retail sales projected to reach $226 billion, an increase of 12 percent over 2011.
- 2012: Us eCommerce and Online Retail holiday sales reach $33.8 billion, up 13 percent.
We will concentrate in further blogs on online buying and selling and come out with some interesting facts.