E-commerce Early Visions

Early Visions of E-commerce

• Computer scientists envisioned an inexpensive, universal communications and computing environment accessible by all
• Economists saw e-commerce as a nearly perfect competitive market with friction-free commerce, lowered search costs, disintermediation, price transparency, and elimination of unfair competitive advantage
• Entrepreneurs saw an extraordinary opportunity to earn far above normal returns on investment, with a first-mover advantage

Understanding E-commerce: Organizing Themes

• Technology: development and mastery of digital computing and communications technology
• Business: new technologies present businesses with new ways of organizing production and transacting business
• Society: intellectual property, individual privacy, and public welfare policy

Academic Disciplines Concerned with E-commerce

• Technical approach: computer science, management science, and information systems
• Behavioral approach: information systems, economics, marketing, management, finance/accounting, and sociology

Pinterest and the Age of Privacy

• Pinterest drives more purchasing than Facebook links, with users spending on average $80 per online purchase, twice the amount of Facebook users
• Pinterest has developed a mobile version of its website, serving multiple platforms
• Almost 25% of large retailers are highlighting Pinterest in their marketing e-mail
• eBay and Amazon have added Pinterest buttons to allow users to share product images and page links directly from their platforms

E-commerce Trends 2012-2013

• A new "social e-commerce" continues to emerge based on social networks and supported by advertising
• Mobile retail e-commerce explodes to more than $11 billion in the US
• Search engine marketing continues to challenge traditional marketing and advertising media
• More than 1 million apps in Apple's and Google's app stores create a new platform for online transactions
• Cloud computing stores consumer content and software on Internet servers, making it available to any consumer-connected device
• Big Data and social networks encourage self-revelation while threatening privacy
• Concerns over commercial and governmental privacy invasion increases
• Internet security continues to decline as major sites are hacked

Major Types of E-commerce

• B2C (Business to Consumer): online businesses selling to individual consumers, including purchases of retail goods, travel services, and online content
• B2B (Business to Business): online business selling to other businesses, the largest form of e-commerce
• C2C (Consumer to Consumer): online consumers selling to other consumers, relying on auction sites or market makers
• Social E-commerce: e-commerce enabled by social networks and online social relationships
• Mobile E-commerce: use of mobile devices to enable transactions on the web
• Local E-commerce: focused on engaging the consumer based on their current geographic location

Stages of E-commerce History

• 1995-2000: Invention, characterized by digital disruption of entire industries, first-mover advantage, disintermediation, and friction-free commerce
• 2001-2006: Consolidation, marked by a sobering period of reassessment, business-driven approach, and emphasis on profitability
• 2006-Present: Reinvention, characterized by a "social, mobile, local" online world, new models based on user-generated content, social networks, and services