Definition of electronic commerce

What is electronic commerce or commerce?

With the arrival of the 2.0 era, the way in which consumers make their purchasing processes changed completely, and when understanding this change in consumer culture, new options began to emerge so that buyers could acquire what they want with ease click, that is, the era 2.0 opened the way to electronic commerce or eCommerce.
The growth of this type of commercial exchange and the increase in connectivity and access to smart devices in recent years has been such that according to an IDC study sponsored by Paypal on E-commerce, in Latin America it is expected that by 2019 electronic system exceeds US $ 100,000 million, which is an increase of 177% compared to 2014.
Likewise, Federico Gómez Schumacher, CEO of PayPal Mexico, said that "Latin America becomes an increasingly important market in terms of electronic commerce because its consumers are enjoying the benefits of online shopping, coupled with factors as greater connectivity and an increase in trust towards payment methods. "

In addition, when we talk about the time that Latin Americans stay connected to the internet, this study showed that they spend 25 hours monthly browsing the internet, but when it comes to a person with a high purchasing power this figure transforms into 380 hours per month.
The table below shows the penetration of eCommerce in six countries in Latin America from 2012 to 2105, we can also see the expected figure for 2019, which means that this field instead of stopping, it will definitely keep moving forward.

Definition of electronic commerce
The first thing that you must be very clear about is what is e-commerce or eCommerce, so that in this way you can start to have a different vision of your retail from offline to online.
According to Wikipedia "Electronic commerce, also known as e-commerce (electronic commerce in English) or Internet business or online business, consists of the purchase and sale of products or services through electronic means, such as the Internet and other computer networks ".
For its part, for Entrepreneur e-commerce is "the process by which two or more parties conduct a business transaction through a computer and an access network."
For Enrique Dans, Professor of Information Technologies at the Instituto de Empresa, e-commerce is defined in a very broad and ideal way: ¨Electronic commerce or eCommerce is a modern methodology that responds to various business and consumer needs, such as reducing costs, improve the quality of products and services, shorten delivery time or improve communication with the customer. "
In general terms, uniting all these concepts, electronic commerce or eCommerce is a process of satisfying the needs of a consumer through the acquisition of products or services through the web.
A point worth analyzing is the one named by Professor Enrique Dans when he talks about "improving the quality of products and services, shortening delivery time or improving communication with the customer.", Because without a doubt, while a better user experience have the consumer, more times will return to your online store.
History of e-commerce or eCommerce
Undoubtedly, in order to begin to tell the story of electronic commerce or eCommerce, we must tell you the story of the birth of the internet. The first step for electronic commerce occurred in the late 1970s, when companies and business organizations were allowed to send commercial documents electronically.
Electronic commerce began to be born in 1991, when the Internet was opened for commercial use. While the Internet became very popular for this year when it reached the general public, it took approximately four years to create security protocols that would allow quick access and a permanent connection to the Internet.
With the birth of Amazon in 1994, whose bet was much more ambitious than many other businesses that were already on the web, offering significantly more products to users, electronic commerce was officially inaugurated. It was founded by Jeff Bezos and was one of the first e-commerce companies in America to sell products over the Internet.
It was for the year 2000 when many companies in the United States and Western Europe presented their services on the World Wide Web. From this moment, Internet users began to recognize the term of e-commerce or eCommerce.
But as newbies in the subject, in 2000 there was a strong collapse of the .com and Amazon was not saved from it. It lost its position as a successful business model, however, in 2003 the company made its first annual profit, which was the first step to its development.
Since then many companies recognized the advantages of electronic commerce and began to add these capabilities to their websites, for example, after the online grocery store Webvan came to ruin, two supermarket chains, Albertsons and Safeway, They started using e-commerce to allow their customers to shop online.
At the end of 2001, according to money.howstuffworks, the largest form of e-commerce, the business-to-business (B2B) model, had around $ 700 billion in transactions and, by the end of 2007, e-commerce sales accounted for 3.4 percent of total sales.