Development of E-Commerce and its Future Perspectives

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Development of E-Commerce and its Future Perspectives

Although, e-commerce has been in existence since 1980, it was officially accepted as a way of doing business in 1995. By 1997, it had grown to a capacity of twenty-six million United States’ (US) dollars and proceeded to hit the one trillion US dollar mark by 2005 (Mohapatra, 2012). The progress of e-commerce has been quite impressive. When it started, it was for a few individuals who had special credit cards and access to internet based systems. However, with time, financial institutions introduced VISA cards and MasterCard provisions to numerous account holders. These cards have the abilities to facilitate transactions on the internet and different online systems. So, e-commerce allows sellers to show buyers what they offer online while the buyers evaluate varied offers, choose befitting options, and make payments for their purchases. In the case of electronically transmittable products, customers do an instant download. These include e-books, marketing, anti-virus, and other software materials. Conversely, physical products get delivered by companies to their destinations of choice promptly. No doubt, this is a better method to do business than all methods that existed before its development.Since its invention, e-commerce has improved by at least twenty percent every year on a compounding assessment basis. Considered in terms of its essential features, it requires minimal amounts of money to facilitate, yet, it results in many advantages to businesses and consumers. Thus, by owning a company website, a firm can market products, make sales to clients, receive payments, effect refunds, and schedule deliveries. As a result, companies do not have to employ workers at every company branch while customers carry out virtual instead of physical visits to stores. So far, the most electronically transacted products and services are insurance, e-books, flowers, e-learning, traveling services, and tourism services among others (Snijders, 2003). Nevertheless, the opportunity has not blocked any product or service out; thus, in days to come, the system will broaden both in its applicability and global penetration.When e-commerce came to the limelight, it was believed that it would not successfully facilitate global businesses. This is because there were limited and controlled electronic connections which were quite expensive. However, classical business approaches also presented a number of hurdles. It was very expensive to travel abroad to import products. Travelling with huge amounts of cash also posed a security risk. However, these hurdles have since been eliminated by the emergence of e-commerce. The presence of the internet provides all the information one would travel abroad to look for. Furthermore, e-commerce has availed many payment methods with instant transmission abilities. Therefore, international business activities have become easier to effect (Szuprowicz, 1998).

However, e-commerce is still experiencing a number of challenges. Although it easy to effect payments via online systems, one must have some basic skills in Information Technology and the technological know-how to effect such operations (Mohapatra, 2012). A number of internet-based transactions have also been blamed for cases of fraud in which unsuspecting buyers have lost large sums of money to criminals posing as businesspersons. Nevertheless, this is one of the areas in which e-commerce is expected to improve in the future. Additionally, it is projected that internet penetration targeting more regions will improve in the future. Consequently, costs per unit of data will reduce and make connections affordable to more people.

E-commerce is currently doing well at less than a half of its potential. It is reducing the need for printing money and helping to save resources used in the same. An estimation of the amounts of money circulating in e-commerce indicates that approximately two trillions US dollars are transacted annually. If proper systems are put in place to track this money, it will be a booster to most economies where unscrupulous citizen and companies are taking advantage of current inefficiency of e-commerce to evade taxes. In summary, all future projections predict continuous success for e-commerce.

References

Mohapatra, S. (2012). E-commerce Strategy: Text and Cases. New York: Springer.

Snijders, H. J. (2003). E-commerce law: National and Transnational Topics and Perspectives. The Hague: Kluwer Law Internat.

Szuprowicz, B. O. (1998). Extranets and Intranets: E-commerce Business Strategies for the Future. Charleston, S.C: Computer Technology Research.