Online shopping (sometimes known as
e-tail from "electronic retail" or
e-shopping) is a form of
electronic commerce which allows consumers to directly buy goods or
services from a seller over the
Internet using a
web browser. Alternative names are: e-web-store, e-shop, e-store, Internet shop, web-shop, web-store, online store, online storefront and virtual store. Mobile commerce (or
m-commerce) describes purchasing from an online retailer's mobile optimized online site or app.
An online shop evokes the physical analogy of buying
products or services at a
bricks-and-mortar retailer or
shopping center; the process is called business-to-consumer (B2C) online shopping. In the case where a business buys from another business, the process is called business-to-business (B2B) online shopping. The largest of these online retailing corporations are
Alibaba,
Amazon.com, and
eBay.
[1]
History
English entrepreneur
Michael Aldrich invented online shopping in 1979. His system connected a modified domestic TV to a real-time transaction processing computer via a domestic telephone line. He believed that
videotex, the modified domestic TV technology with a simple menu-driven human–computer interface, was a 'new, universally applicable, participative communication medium — the first since the invention of the telephone.' This enabled 'closed' corporate information systems to be opened to 'outside' correspondents not just for transaction processing but also for e-messaging and information retrieval and dissemination, later known as
e-business.
[2] His definition of the new mass communications medium as 'participative' [interactive, many-to-many] was fundamentally different from the traditional definitions of
mass communication and
mass media and a precursor to the social networking on the
Internet 25 years later.
In March 1980 he went on to launch Redifon's Office Revolution, which allowed consumers, customers, agents, distributors, suppliers and service companies to be connected on-line to the corporate systems and allow business transactions to be completed electronically in real-time.
[3]
During the 1980s
[4] he designed, manufactured, sold, installed, maintained and supported many online shopping systems, using videotex technology.
[5] These systems which also provided voice response and handprint processing pre-date the Internet and the
World Wide Web, the
IBM PC, and
Microsoft MS-DOS, and were installed mainly in the UK by large corporations.
The first
World Wide Web server and browser, created by
Tim Berners-Lee in 1990, opened for commercial use in 1991.
[6] Thereafter, subsequent technological innovations emerged in 1994: online banking, the opening of an online pizza shop by
Pizza Hut,
[6] Netscape's
SSL v2 encryption standard for secure data transfer, and
Intershop's first online shopping system. The first secure retail transaction over the Web was either by
NetMarket or
Internet Shopping Network in 1994.
[7] Immediately after,
Amazon.com launched its online shopping site in 1995 and eBay was also introduced in 1995.
[6] Alibaba's sites
Taobao and
Tmall were launched in 2003 and 2008, respectively.
Retailers are increasingly selling goods and services prior to availability through
pretail for testing, building, and managing demand.
[citation needed]
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