The Internet and Its Growth
Nowadays, the internet represents powerful information technology capable of creating new business opportunities for organizations, namely in the creation of positioning strategies, something that was not possible before because of the information technologies available then (Porter & Michael, 2001).
From a commercial point of view, Dijesh and Babu (2016) consider that the Internet brings benefits both to sellers (as it can help organizations reach a narrower market segment, which in turn may result in sales and then profit) and buyers, as it allows searching for products/services from different sellers.
The market is becoming increasingly attractive, not only for buyers who have a huge variety of products/services available, but also for sellers who have access to new customers, thus reducing the costs inherent to these transactions for everyone involved (Kaplan & Sawhney, 2000; Srinivasan, Anderson & Ponnavolu, 2002).
Gunasekaran, Marri, McGaughey and Nebhwani (2002) consider that nowadays people feel more comfortable using the Internet, and its worth is emphasized by the amount of information it makes available to users worldwide. Websites are just a click away and they have become a new kind of information technology (Liu & Arnett, 2000).
To determine the current importance of the internet at a global level, the North American consultant Hootsuite has published global digital data for the year 2017 when, as shown in Figure 1, around 4,021 billion people were Internet users. The world population is circa 7,593 billion.
Figure 1. World population using the Internet regularly
According to the same marketing consultant, the number of Internet users is around 7.73 million in Portugal, with 78% of those aged between 16 and 74 using the mobile/smartphone for access, while 73% use laptop computers (INE, 2016). This data is shown in Figure 2.
Figure 2. Proportion of people between the ages of 16 and 74 that use the internet and the equipment used to access it, Portugal, 2016.