What is it and Why is E-Commerce Important to Me?

Thursday January 29th, 2004

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Summary: According to the Department of Commerce, Any activity that utilizes some form of electronic communication in the inventory, exchange, advertisement, distribution, and/or payment for goods and services.

What is E-Commerce

So what is electronic commerce?

If you ask most of the general public what they see e-commerce as meaning, they'll probably say "buying and selling on-line." In this segment, we concentrate on activities involved in buying and selling goods and services on-line through an Internet location.

In this section, you will have an opportunity to learn the basics of Electronic Commerce and its significance to you. The Minority Business Development Agency and the National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST developed an introductory course titled Electronic Commerce: The Future Is Now.

Why is E-Commerce Important to Me?

Here are a few short items to remind you of why the Internet is so important to business today. If you are in the business of marketing to the public, or to other businesses, e-commerce is vital to your future. While the overall economy has been growing by single-digit rates in the longest economic expansion in history, electronic commerce has been growing orders of magnitude faster than the economy as a whole. A Washington Post report in January of 1999 reported that holiday shopping online had tripled. Projections for Internet commerce in the first few years of the 21st century range between hundreds of billions and trillions of dollars, depending on who is doing the projection. All agree that Internet commerce will be a major part of the 21st century world economy.

Depending on your sources, there either are or soon will be over 100 million people with accounts on the World Wide Web. Between a quarter and a third of them are Internet shoppers. You can't afford to turn your back on 25-35 million potential customers and hope to succeed.

The biggest battle in corporate America today is between the telephone companies and the cable and satellite TV companies over who will provide the bulk of Internet connectivity to the home in the future. AT&T; just spent billions of dollars to acquire cable TV companies in order to gain access to that high-speed wire leading into the home. If AT&T; would not be willing to pay that kind of money unless they saw big returns down the line.

The scope of products that can be sold on-line has grown to the point where it is easier to list those which have not yet been marketed via the Internet. Don't believe that it doesn't apply to your business unless you are willing to bet everything on being right.