Ex. 4.2. Read and translate the following text

EVOLUTION OF ELECTRONIC COMMERCE

The business phenomenon that we now call electronic commerce has had an interesting history. From humble beginnings in the mid-1990s, electronic commerce grew rapidly until 2000, when a major downturn occurred. The popular media published endless news stories describing how the “dot-com boom” had turned into the “dot-com bust.” Between 2000 and 2003, many industry observers were writing obituaries for electronic commerce. Just as the unreasonable expectations for immediate success had fueled unwarranted high expectations during the boom years, overly gloomy news reports colored perceptions during this time.

Beginning in 2003, electronic commerce began to show signs of a profound rebirth. Companies that had survived the downturn were not only seeing growth in sales again, but many of them were showing profits for the first time. As the economy grew, electronic commerce grew also, but at a faster pace than the overall economy. Thus, electronic commerce gradually became a larger part of the total economy. In the general economic recession that started in 2008, electronic commerce suffered far less than most of the economy. From 2003 through the present, as the general economy has expanded and contracted, electronic commerce has consistently expanded more in the good times and contracted less in the bad times than other economic sectors.

Categorizing electronic commerce by the types of entities participating in the transactions or business processes is a useful and commonly accepted way to define online business. The four general electronic commerce categories are business-to-consumer (or B2C), business-to-business (or B2B), consumer-to-consumer (or C2C), and business-to-government (or B2G).

Electronic Commerce and Electronic Business

To many people, the term “electronic commerce” means shopping on the part of the Internet called the World Wide Web (the Web). However, electronic commerce (or e-commerce) also includes many other activities, such as businesses trading with other businesses and internal processes that companies use to support their buying, selling, hiring, planning, and other activities. Some people use the term electronic business (or e-business) when they are talking about electronic commerce in this broader sense. For example, IBM defines electronic business as “the transformation of key business processes through the use of Internet technologies.” Most people use the terms “electronic commerce” and “electronic business” interchangeably. In this book, the term electronic commerce (or e-commerce) is used in its broadest sense and includes all business activities that use Internet technologies. Internet technologies include the Internet, the World Wide Web, and other technologies such as wireless transmissions on mobile telephone networks. Companies that operate only online are sometimes called dot-com or pure dot-com businesses to distinguish them from companies that operate in physical locations (solely or together with online operations); however, online business activity has become so integrated with everyday life in much of the world that few people worry about these distinctions any longer.

 (From: Gary P. Schneider (2015) Electronic Commerce. (11^th ed.). Cengage Learning. P.5-6)

Ex.4.3. Fill in the gaps with “C” (electronic commerce) or “B” (electronic business).

While some use ___1___  and ___2___   interchangeably, they are distinct concepts. In ___3___   , information and communications technology (ICT) is used in inter-business or inter-organizational transactions (transactions between and among firms/organizations) and in business-to-consumer transactions (transactions between firms/organizations and individuals).

In ___4___    , on the other hand, ICT is used to enhance one’s business. It includes any process that a business organization (either a for-profit, governmental or non-profit entity) conducts over a computer-mediated network. A more comprehensive definition of ___5___    is:

“The transformation of an organization’s processes to deliver additional customer value through the application of technologies, philosophies and computing paradigm of the new economy.”

(From: http://de.wikibooks.org/wiki/Benutzer:Dirk_Huenniger/wb2pdf)

Ex. 4.4. Read the text. Then decide which of the sentences in the table present advantages and disadvantages of e-commerce. Put “+” or “-“ into each line.

Advantages of electronic commerce

Electronic commerce can increase sales and decrease costs. Advertising done well on the web can get even a small firm’s promotional message out to potential consumers in every country in the world. A firm can use electronic commerce to reach narrow market segments that are geographically scattered. The web is particularly useful in creating virtual communities that become ideal target markets for specific types of products or services. A virtual community is a gathering of people who share a common interest, but instead of this gathering occurring in the physical world, it takes place on the Internet.