Education

INTRODUCTION

E-commerce is known as electronic commerce. E-commerce involves the conducting of commercial transactions through electronic media. In other words, e-commerce is any transactions which is through any electronic means such as facsimile, telex and telephone. Today, the term is restricted to trade and commercial transactions involving computer to computer communications. Electronic communications take place either through a ‘closed’ or ‘open’ network. A closed computer network system is one that is closed to the public with easily identifiable users. Examples include debit cards, credit cards and electronic data interchange (EDI). On the other hand, an open system is one that is open to the public with multiple users. An example is the internet.

E-commerce history can be traced back to the birth of the Internet in the 1960s. The Internet was originally developed as a way of sharing current results of military research sponsored by the US government which is described by J.C.R Licklider of MIT in 1962 and developed by DARPA (Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency) and for some time the technology was confined to the military.

In the 1980s however, businesses learned about the new technology and started funding research into the hardware and software. This research developed systems that are used by industry, universities and eventually commerce.

The development of the World Wide Web during the early 1990s dramatically changed the use of the Internet. The expansion of the Web, and along with it the Web browser, opened the Internet to anyone with basic computer experience and an online connection. As online activity increased, companies quickly saw the Internet's marketing potential. Subsequently, there was a rush to take products and services into this expanding electronic realm, and to redefine business itself. Online companies and trading only gained momentum in the middle of the 1990s.

To meet this demand,...