AIR CARG O WEEK


E-COMMERCE


ECOMMERCE: HOW DID IT ALL BEGIN?


ECOMMERCE, OR ELECTRONIC COMMERCE, IS THE BUYING AND SELLING OF PRODUCTS OR SERVICES VIA THE INTERNET. FOR MANY CONSUMERS, E-COMMERCE IS SOMETHING WE PARTICIPATE IN ON A DAILY BASIS, LIKE MAKING AN ONLINE BILL PAYMENT OR PURCHASING FROM AN ONLINE SELLER. E-COMMERCE CAN TAKE MANY FORMS AND INVOLVE DIFFERENT TRANSACTIONS.


“The team of young cyberspace entrepreneurs celebrated what was apparently the first retail transaction on the Internet using a readily available version of powerful data encryption software designed to guarantee privacy.”


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THE TAIL END T


he history of ecommerce started over 40 years ago, when the introduction of early technology like Electronic Data Interchange (EDI) and teleshopping in the 1970s paved the way for the modern-day ecommerce store as we know it today. The history of ecommerce is closely intertwined with the


history of the internet. Online shopping became possible when the internet was opened to the public in 1991. Amazon was one of the first ecommerce sites to start selling products online and millions of businesses have followed since. The convenience, safety and enjoyable user experience of ecommerce have improved exponentially since the inception of online shopping.


When was online shopping invented? Online shopping was invented in 1979 by UK entrepreneur Michael Aldrich. He was able to connect a modified domestic television to a real- time multi-user transaction processing computer via a telephone line. The system was marketed in 1980 and offered as business-to-business systems that were then sold in the UK, Ireland and Spain. Book Stacks Unlimited, an online bookstore created by Charles M.


Stack in 1992, was one of the earliest consumer shopping experiences. Stack’s store began as a dial-up bulletin board three years before Amazon was founded. In 1994, Book Stacks Unlimited moved to the Internet as Books.com and was eventually acquired by Barnes & Noble. The August 12, 1994 issue of New York Times, appropriately titled “Internet


is Open” chronicled the sale between two friends of a Sting CD. The Times said: “The team of young cyberspace entrepreneurs celebrated what was apparently the first retail transaction on the Internet using a readily available version of powerful data encryption software designed to guarantee privacy.” The development of the Electronic Data Interchange (EDI) in the


1960s paved the way for electronic commerce. EDI replaced traditional mailing and faxing of documents by allowing a digital transfer of data from one computer to another. Trading partners could transfer orders, invoices and other business


transactions using a data format that met the ANSI ASC X12, the predominant set of standards in North America for inter-industry electronic exchange. Once an order is sent, it is then examined by a VAN (Value-Added Network) and directed to the recipient’s order processing system. EDI allowed the transfer of data seamlessly without any human intervention. Aldrich’s invention, the idea for which was sparked by a conversation


with his wife about their weekly supermarket shopping expedition, involved hooking a television to their supermarket to have them deliver the groceries. Aldrich coined his invention “teleshopping” (shopping at a distance), which can be seen as the precursor for modern online shopping. It was apparent from the beginning that these early advancements


would make B2B online shopping commercially lucrative. B2C would not be successful until the later widespread use of PCs and the World Wide Web. In 1982, France launched Minitel, an online service that used a Videotex


terminal machine accessed through telephone lines. The Minitel was free to telephone subscribers and connected millions of users to a computing network. By 1997, over seven million homes had Minitel terminals. The


Minitel system was popular before falling out of favour after the success of the internet three years later.


WWW arrives In 1990 Tim Berners-Lee, later knighted, and Robert Cailliau published a proposal to build a “Hypertext project” called “World Wide Web.” The inspiration for this project was modelled after the Dynatex SGML reader licensed by CERN. That same year, Berners-Lee created the first web server and wrote


the first web browser. Shortly thereafter, he went on to debut the web on August 6, 1991 as a publicly-available service on the Internet. When Berners-Lee decided he would take on the task of marrying hypertext to the Internet, the process led him to develop URL, HTML and HTTP. In 1991, the National Science Foundation lifted its restrictions on


commercial use of the NET, causing online shopping to grow exponentially. In September 1995, the NSF began charging a fee for registering domain names. The number of domain names quickly grew to two million by 1993. By this time, the NSF’s role in the Internet came to an end and a lot of the oversight shifted to the commercial sector.


The growth of e-commerce In the mid-90s, there were major advancements in the commercial use of the Internet. One of the first ecommerce sites was Amazon, which started in 1995 as an online bookstore but grew to become the largest online retailer in the world. Traditional brick-and-mortar bookstores were limited to about 200,000 titles. Amazon, being an online only store without physical limitations, was able to offer exponentially more products to the shopper. Amazon’s range has expanded over the years and now includes music,


video downloads, electronics, apparel, furniture, food, and toys. The retail giant was one of the first online retailers to add user reviews and


a rating scale for their products. Product reviews are now considered one of the most effective tactics for driving sales and building customer trust. Other ecommerce marketplace success stories include eBay, an online


auction site that debuted in 1995, and Etsy, which launched in 2005 and by 2019 saw gross merchandise sales total $4.97 billion globally. The late 1990s also saw new ecommerce platform options for


merchants. Miva’s first catalogue-based e-commerce product was launched in 1997, achieving wide distribution in the late 1990s.


The rise of mobile commerce Mobile commerce was first born in 1997, when two mobile device- enabled Coca-Cola vending were installed in Finland. Mobile commerce gained speed over the next two decades, as more users began conducting transactions from their mobile devices and websites evolved to provide a better user experiences. Now, mobile sales are projected to reach 54% of all e-commerce sales by 2021. Today, both consumers and business buyers turn to mobile devices for


product research and coupons, with engagement on social media becoming increasingly popular. Business buyers are expecting more consumer-focused features like personalization and responsive design and demanding the ability to quickly locate product details, secure pricing and receive online help.


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