e-commerce economics

E-commerce originated in a standard for the exchange of business documents, such as orders or invoices, between suppliers and their business customers. Those origins date to the 1948–49 Berlin blockade and airlift with a system of ordering goods primarily via telex. Various industries elaborated upon that system in the ensuing decades before the first general standard was published in 1975. The resulting computer-to-computer electronic data interchange (EDI) standard is flexible enough to handle most simple electronic business transactions.

With the wide adoption of the Internet and the introduction of the World Wide Web in 1991 and of the first browser for accessing it in 1993, most e-commerce shifted to the Internet. More recently, with the global spread of smartphones and the accessibility of fast broadband connections to the Internet, much e-commerce moved to mobile devices, which also included tablets, laptops, and wearable products such as watches.

E-commerce has deeply affected everyday life and how business and governments operate. Commerce is conducted in electronic marketplaces (or marketspaces) and in the supply chains working on the Internet-Web. Consumer-oriented marketplaces include large e-malls (such as Amazon), consumer-to-consumer auction platforms (eBay, for example), multichannel retailers (such as L.L. Bean), and many millions of e-retailers. Massive business-to-business marketplaces have been created by Alibaba and other companies. The so-called sharing economy enables more efficient use of resources, as Airbnb does with online rentals of private residences. Almost instantaneous access to services is made available by on-demand platforms offering, for example, transportation (e.g., Uber), computation and storage resources furnished by cloud service providers, and medical and legal advice. Mass customization of goods sold online, such as garments and vehicles, became common. Electronic currencies (or cryptocurrencies) such as Bitcoin entered into play as the means of settlement. Semipermanent supply chains enable a hub company (such as Dell) to surround itself with suppliers that perform most production tasks and deliver other goods and services to the central firm.

Originial article: https://www.britannica.com/technology/e-commerce