Ecommerce appeared approximately 35 years ago and since the last few years

Ecommerce appeared approximately 35 years ago and since the last few years

Ecommerce appeared approximately 35 years ago and since the last few years, it keeps growing. Thanks to the digital transformation of the economy, and the multiple innovation, we can see more and more businesses investing in e-commerce in order to have an online presence.

We have seen different stage in the development of e-commerce.
It all started in the 60’s when the improvement of the technologies led to the electronic data exchanges. Just after the 90’s online retailing really started to see a huge increase.
The 90’s : The real start of E-commerce.
Even if Pizza Hut claims to be the first company selling online, the first online purchase that has been made was actually in August 1994 by Dan Kohn, a 21 years old American student who set up a website call NetMarket. The product he sold was a CD that he sold to one of his friend. This was the first online transaction using encryption.
Encryption is a technology that basically keeps the data safe like credit cards details, between the parties involved.
After this, the e-commerce industry started to quickly grow. In 1997, the computer company DELL has become the first IT company to announce an online sale record of 1 million dollars made in only one day.
The 2000’s, a new step for the E-commerce industry
In 2003, 20% of Americans possess a computer with broadband in their house, which means that we see a huge increase of people starting to have internet in their homes, so spending more and more online
This had a huge impact on e-commerce sales, and online sales increased by 24% in 2014. Also, big players like Amazon increased their sales by 26% and keep growing since 2003. (See graph next page)