Chapter Preview
TopIntroduction
E-commerce has grown dramatically during the last twenty years. The Internet has provided companies access to new markets, business models, and customers, which can’t otherwise be approached. Customers have found online business an effective way of researching and purchasing products and services without worrying about crowds, distance, and the limitation of regular business hours. The realities have constantly changed since e-commerce emerged and will keep changing in the future. Obviously the benefit of e-commerce cannot be gained if companies do not understand or adapt properly to these developments. In this chapter, we will not focus on recalling the history of e-commerce, but on currently exciting and promising trends in e-commerce. These have the potential to become the game changers in the near future. In the rest of this chapter we will explore a variety of ideas in social media, big data analytics and visualization, mobile commerce, rapid fulfillment, and sharing economy.
Key Terms in this Chapter
Mobile commerce: The use of handheld wireless devices, such as smart phones and tablets, for purchasing goods and services online or in brick-and-mortar stores.
Big Data: Datasets whose size, speed and variety are beyond the ability of typical database software tools to capture, store, administer, and analyze.
Sharing Economy: A socio-economic ecosystem built around the distribution, sharing and reuse of excess or unused human and physical resources.
Data Visualization: Also known as dataviz, an easier-to-understand presentation of summarized data in graphical or pictorial forms, often with drilldown capabilities.
Social media: Information content created by people using highly accessible and scalable publishing technologies that facilitate communications, influence and interaction with peers and public audiences. It is sometime called user generated content.