The catalyst of electronic and Web commerce

The electronic marketers

Electronic marketers are defined as computers that market their products and services to other businesses or consumers through private online networks, commercial on-line services such as Prodigy and America Online (AOL); the internet, CD-ROMs, telecommunications-enhanced CD-ROMs, interactive television and web TV, and floppy disk media.

            Electronic commerce frees retailers and consumers from many store constraints. It changes the dynamic in terms of cost, reach, options, or speed. The cost of establishing, a transactional web site ranges from $3 to $25 million. The reach of the former is global, while the latter is local.

            A web site can deliver products quickly (e.g., a software release) or in a few days (e.g., overnight mail); a retail store can supply products within a few hours (including the time to travel to the store and back) or within a few days (if the item has to be ordered).

The catalyst of electronic and Web commerce:

The internet is an aggregation of networks connecting computer which is seen as one network by the user. It is the case where the whole is greater than the sum of the parts. There has really been no break-throughs in the internet of late. It relies on many protocols that are more than a decade old (some of the protocols are five years old).

            What is new is the ability for the ensemble of the customer’s browsers, local networks, backbone networks, and Web servers to internetwork harmoniously. This enables information (data, graphics, and video) to flow freely and easily, at the click of a mouse. The WWW is one of the more well known applications of the internet to appear of late.  Some of the key findings of recent surveys are as follows:

v  17 percent (37 million) of total persons aged 16 and above in the United States and Canada have access to the internet.

v  11 percent (24 million) of total persons aged 16 and above in the United States and Canada have used the internet in the past three months.

v  Approximately 8 percent (18 million) of total persons aged 16 and above in the United States and Canada have used the WWW in the past three months.

v  Internet users average 5 hours and 28 minutes per week on the Internet.

v  Males represent 66 percent of Internet users and account for 77 percent of Internet usage.

v  On average, WWW user are upscale (25 percent have income over $80,000/year), professional (%0 percent are professional or managerial), and educated (64 percent have at least college degrees).

v  Approximately 14 percent(2.5 million)of WWW users have purchased products or services over the Internet

v  More than 80,000 companies were using the Internet for distribution of critical company information, such as press releases.