Status of Online Retailing in Malaysia

Chapter 1

1.0 INTRODUCTION

This chapter shows overview of the history of Internet and then narrows it down to the emergence of E-tailing. A discussion on popular and frequently used terms such as E-business, E-commerce and E-tailing would be provided in order to distinguish the difference between the terms. Chapter 1 also covers a brief introduction to current and future trends of E-tailing in Malaysia.

1.1 Internet

History of the Internet began with the development of computers in the 1950s. Point-to-point

Communication between mainframe computers and terminals was the beginning. Since then, the development of Internet had grown in alignment with the rapid development of computers. E-commerce emerged during the 1990s when Internet was opened to commercial use and in 2000. E-commerce became a hit in United States and Western European where a great number of businesses represented their products or services in the World Wide Web, promoting and selling to businesses and consumers alike. Before going into a narrower focus in terms of geographical constraint, which is Malaysia, terms such as E-business, E-commerce and E-tailing, would be defined in the following paragraph. E-business, E-commerce and E-tailing are used frequently and sometimes interchangeably. However, slight differences exist between these three terms, thus definitions for each term and their relationships with each other would be reviewed.

1.2 E-commerce

E-Commerce is also defined as the e-business that has a very wide business scope and it is known as the e-business (Neto et al. Al., 2010). E -commerce is a business space on the Internet . E -commerce is the process of distribution, buying, selling, marketing and servicing of a product or service using the Internet. Just by clicking the mouse, a transaction can be conducted anywhere and at anytime (Vince Brown 2006). The definition of e-commerce has been discussed by a number of researchers. The following table (Table...