The impact of e-commerce

Résumé du document

What exactly is e-commerce ? It's an example of one of the many buzzwords that are used concerning the internet that no one really knows the definition. E-commerce refers to selling, advertising and marketing products, all done over the internet.

In other words, the e-commerce allows to conclude an agreement (services or goods) in an electronic form (without any concrete support) thanks to an interactive communication. It also permits to deliver or to download goods and services after having paid a certain price.

E-commerce has to respect the consumer's law and especially the right, for 7 days, to retract an agreement.

The impact of e-commerce is particularly wide : it concerns and affects consumers, managers, traditional commerce and even other branches of economy. Nevertheless, one has to underline that even today the main issue around the impact of e-commerce is mainly to measure this impact and even to know whether it is going to have an impact or not.

E-commerce changes the business environnement. Its leads to different intermediaries, new products, new markets, and new business-consumer relationships as well as new channels for diffusing knowledge and for interaction in the workplace.

E-commerce accelerates changes already under way : regulatory reform, the globalisation of economic activity, the demand for higher-skilled workers.

At present, electronic commerce is relatively small (some $26 billion) but it may approach a trillion dollars by 2003-2005.

E-commerce includes B-to-C commerce and B-to-B commerce. Each segment of e-commerce has a different impact on our lives.

The near term and future growth of e-commerce is likely to be determined by the B2B segment, which now accounts for at least 80% of total e-commerce activity.

Extraits

[...] The weak point of e-commerce is the problem of security. Many websurfers are not buying on the net for they fear to let people know the code of their Credit Card. Even more, many worldwide known virus have caused huge damages to firms such as Yahoo or Microsoft in the last few months. All these problems of piracy, electronic security, raised by the development of e-commerce will have to be solved. The best way to solve them is to develop a real and precise internet law and to affect public funds or to create labels to inform the consumer whether this particular website is safe or not. [...]

[...] The only problem is that no one knows when that is going to happen and surely enough, the e-krach has underlined that the impact of commerce may be long to come. Thus, maybe the great mistake of e-commerce is to have believed that its impact was a complete revolution. Surely enough, it permits innovation but, it can't be disconnected from the traditional rules of economy. The myth of a new Eldorado is in a sense, completely dead. To survive, e-commerce has to be profitable. [...]

[...] The impact on competition and economy : E-commerce has led to the arising of new actors. One of the most famous of these new actors is surely amazon.com created in 1995. Today, it is the widest virtual bookseller on the net with more than of the American book market. Barnes and Nobles that was the main actor of this sector has been waiting for too long before going on the net and today, in less than 4 years, a new major competitor has risen. [...]

[...] It is not the case today, hence a limited impact. But, one day, e-commerce will let everybody know what its potentialities are, the only problem is to know when it is going to happen ? E-commerce's most significant impact will be on sectors that primarily transmit information (postal service, communications, radio and and those that produce it (finance, entertainment, travel agents or stock brokers). Electronically delivered products such as software, travel services, entertainment and finance are leading products in both the B2B and B2C consumer markets. [...]

[...] The impact of e-commerce E-commerce definition What exactly is e-commerce ? It's an example of one of the many buzzwords that are used concerning the internet that no one really knows the definition. E-commerce refers to selling, advertising and marketing products, all done over the internet. In other words, the e-commerce allows to conclude an agreement (services or goods) in an electronic form (without any concrete support) thanks to an interactive communication. It also permits to deliver or to download goods and services after having paid a certain price. [...]