Essay on the Evolution of E-Commerce and Its Impact on Retail Trade

When the internet was invented, it was only helping a few people and it was mainly used by the armies. This was until when it started being an advantage for every retailer or buyer using it. Today, it is every companys necessity. It is not possible for a company or retailer to remain competitive without an online platform. Over the last few decades, the number of adults using social media has gone up globally. Meanwhile, the Internet connectivity is rapidly growing everywhere. Many traditional street-side retailers who transact business face to face with their customers from stores or offices have lost ground to e-commerce.

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E-commerce is an online transaction or online selling. It is a methodology of modern business which addresses the need of business organizations to reduce cost and improve the quality of goods and services while increasing the efficiency of delivery. E-commerce has brought to an end heavy deficiency on information exchange from person to person by introducing electronic communication channels. Modern electronic commerce includes technologies like online transaction processing, electronic data exchange electronic money transfer, internet marketing, and data collection systems. E-commerce provides services like non-cash payment, all time service availability for twenty-four hours and seven days a week.

Over the period of over twenty years, e-commerce evolved from a mere new concept to a major part of the global economy. The major step was made in the year 1991 with the creation of the World Wide Web (WWW). This is an information space where web resources and other important documents are found using uniform resource locators (URLS). Retailers could now advertise and sell their products through their various websites. Orders by consumers through online platform were facilitated by this technology invention. This was later followed by Netscape launching the Navigator, which the first widely-used browser, in 1994. This is a discontinued proprietor browser.

A major development in e-commerce was made in 1996 with over 40 million people accessing the internet. This led to the online sales surpassing 1 billion dollars in that year. With the rise in the online sales, there was a need for an improved and effective mode of payment. This was made possible by the foundation of Paypal in 1996. This brought in some major improvements in which people made sales online. The online payments harness internet's potential as a trading platform, facilitating competition and growth in the economy. Its operation takes place behind the scenes allowing the online exchange of goods and services to take place efficiently and effectively over the internet. The payment system has evolved over time to address peoples desire to transact in large scale. Online payments for e-commerce transactions are expanding across the world.

By the year 2000, the growth in e-commerce was evident with the growth in revenue from online shopping. This was created by the growth in a number of Internet users making online purchases. This was followed by the facebook online advertisements in 2006. With over 6 million users by end 2006, there was the possibility of many people accessing the advertisement through the social platform.

The internet has enabled retailers to connect with potential customers. This has enabled the retailers to express their products in quite new ways. Through this, physical retail stalls and stores have become a part of their sales method instead of being their sole or basic way to get reach to their customers. This ability of retailers to communicate and transact has actually led to a better and more focused physical store identities. The presence of internet retailing has brought together both offline and online shopping experience. For the retailers who use this approach, prices are consistent and the consumers choose from several shopping approaches. Such approaches include shopping online and picking up at the physical stores, shopping online with home delivery, shopping at the stores and taking the purchased goods away or shopping at the stores and having the merchandise delivered to their homes. E-commerce has also helped retailers make elements of their online experience similar to their retail stores and even some going to the extent of attempting to integrate elements of their online into their physical stores through software or live links to events in other countries or even stores.

The e-commerce has also affected retailers in ways that are far beyond their physical presence or online platform. Fast fashion retailers, manufacturing design, and logistics retailers are fast growing. The online platform comes not only with convenience but also offers the latest styles, reasonable prices in line with quick and continuous updates, which werent possible before. Many products are now looking for individuals to set the trends for retailers from a variety of sources, which through social media connect with other buyers from the other parts of the world.

With the expansion of the social media and social networking sites, it is made possible to develop marketing strategies in firm trust-building and their effect on customers intention to buy goods online. With the rise in social networks, there is an emergence of new era content creation. This is where individual retailers can share information and experiences with other people. There has been a creation of businesses based on communities which are a good tool for new customer attraction. These communities provide an opportunity for retailers to have a good relation with the customers. The platform where consumers interact with the retailers make the members get familiar with one another which help in building trust between the members. This affects the buyer's intention to buy.

Individuals apply various social media services such as online communities, forums, reviews and ratings to interact with the retailers. Online reviews are one of the key emerging areas. Consumers are highly encouraged by firms to rate and review products and services online. The review and the rating affect the purchasing decision of the buyer. Goods and service recommendation is another developed area applied by the retailers. Most buyers depend on other peoples recommendations rather than the retailer generated goods information. These interactions provided by online media help increase the level of trust between the retailers and the consumers. This reduces the perceived risk.

The Internet has consolidated itself as a powerful platform that has changed the way people transact their business over a very short period of time. Its evolution over that period of time has been marked by two many factors. These are the social web and the mobile technology. These two innovations have led to increased use of internet creating a major growth in e-commerce. With this growth, there is a creation of a global village which makes the distance shorter and the world smaller. Internet market will develop even further if some minor challenges are properly and efficiently addressed. Some of these problems are the fact that there are many different languages spoken in the world.