The history and the evolution of E-Commerce

Past
In 1968, Electronic Data Interchange (EDI) was introduced to the public to make it possible for companies to interface and trade without any human contact. EDI is the first step of the developing of E Commerce. But, the cost of having an EDI system was a heavy burden for those suppliers, purchasers, subsidiaries, so that EDI was failed to meet the needs of most organizations.

In 1984, ASC X12 standards was introduced, it allowing for full communication between any EDI supported companies. After the standard was adopted, those companies could transfer information and receive demand through their computer systems. ASC X12 revolution turned E commerce from a commercial novelty to commercial standard.


In 1989, roughly 100,000 users are using the internet services in United State. After that, the internet browse Netscape was introduced in 1994. It means all of the internet users could surf the net without having to use UNIX command-line language. Not just the Netscape web browser, Microsoft Internet Explorer also increase the number of the internet users yearly. The increasing of the users can help in the development of E commerce. In 1996, e commerce created $500 million transaction in holiday season.

Present
Nowadays, e shopping is more common compared with the 1990s because of the evolution of the broadband service and the introduction of Netscape which helps in the process of the revolution of E commerce. Recently, we can find that many free web browsers such as Mozilla firefox which provide graphics and formatted text to complicated systems capable of graphics, audio, interactivity and playing video to attract users.

People who were afraid to shop online or buy a computer five years ago are now surfing on a daily basis. This statement showed that the Internet has been accepted by the population faster than any previous technology. Through the graph on left, we can find that there was a huge increase of internet sales volume in between 2000Q3 and 2000Q4.

Although there are many users like online shopping, limitations were still existed. Shoppers are still unwillingness to give out personal information over the Internet because they fear that the information may be misused.

E-Commerce is still one of the leading forces of economic growth today. People are now accustomed to buying tickets over the Internet, shopping for gifts before they even step foot in a store and researching products without leaving the comfort of their home. With the Internet still in its infancy, the future of e-commerce has the ability to evolve and again revolutionize the way people think about shopping.