PAS BUSINESS STUDIESBusiness and Technology - assignment one‘E-commerce in the new millenium’

PAS BUSINESS STUDIES
Business and Technology - assignment one
‘E-commerce in the new millenium’

1. E-commerce means on-line trading and promotion, that is, buying, selling and advertising goods and services over electronic networks. Although e-commerce refers to all electronic transactions over any electronic network, today we tend to think of it as transactions carried out using the Internet. Electronic commerce has in fact been around for a long time. Large corporations have been conducting electronic transactions via Electronic Data Interchange (or EDI) for years. The problem is that EDI is run on proprietary networks, and uses proprietary software. It is too expensive to be used by smaller businesses. The Internet, on the other hand, is an open network. The software that makes the Internet work is in the public domain. Anyone can install it for free. The Internet Service Providers (ISP’s) who sell you Internet access are often owned by large companies, which also own the...