INTRODUCTION E-commerce is a technology-mediated exchange between parties (individuals or organizations) as well as the electronically based intra-or inter- organizational activities that facilitate such exchanges. It is the business option in which the transactions take place via telecommunications networks. It changes the way you shop, learn, interact and transact business; this wave of emerging technology affects every facet of your lifestyle, home as well as your workplace. E-commerce is directly or indirectly applicable in all areas of our life be it banking, entertainment, on line orders processing cycle or SCM (Supply Chain Management). Due to its wide variety of applications e-commerce has gained a lot of popularity over the decade. It has drawn the attention of researchers regarding the new technologies and resolving the security issues regarding the electronic transactions.

Fig 1.1 Different Application areas of E-Commerce E-commerce has been defined broadly as the business transactions of business over the achieving greater efficiencies within their organization using information technology, the last half of this decade is seeing a new wave of increased efficiencies by extending the information technology to the Web, both to the trading partners, as well as to end consumers. While efficiencies lead to increased profitability, the Web offers other advantages, such as a greater reach, short-term relationships, one-to-one marketing, re-intermediation, disintermediation etc. which are either difficult, or impossible to do in the traditional physical economy. Obviously, electronic commerce will first pass through the phase of “electronification” of current trading practices, and only later evolve into something radically different from its physical counterpart. E-commerce is definitely the future. It could become a significant global economic element in the future. The infrastructure of EC is networked computing. It connects several computers and other electronic devices by telecommunication networks. This allows the user to access information stored in several places and to communicate and collaborate with others from their desktop computers. A vast majority of people use computers connected to a global networked environment known as internet, or its counterpart within organization called an intranet. This new breed of computing is helping large number of organizations, private & public in manufacturing, agriculture and services. WHAT IS AN E-COMMERCE? E-commerce, or electronic commerce is an emerging concept that describes the process of buying and selling or exchanging of products, services and information via computer network including the Internet. It includes all inter-company and intra-company functions (such as marketing, finance, manufacturing, selling, and negotiation) that enable commerce and use electronic mail, EDI, file transfer, fax, video conferencing, workflow, or interaction with a remote computer. E-commerce, or electronic commerce is defined as “the conducting of business communication and transactions over networks and through computers”.

Fig. 1.2. Different perspectives of E-commerce The concept of e-commerce, is spanned across various dimensions. Hence different school of thought gave different definitions with different perspectives. Some defined it from business perspective and some defined with service perspective. The various perspectives are shown in the Fig 1.2. E-commerce can be defined from various perspectives as: Communications perspective: From a communication perspective, e-commerce is the delivery of goods, services, information or payments over computer networks, telephone lines or any other electronic means. Business perspective: From a business perspective, e-commerce is the application of technology toward the automation of business transactions Service perspective: From a service perspective, e-commerce is a tool that addresses the desire of firms, consumers and management to cut service costs while improving the quality of goods and increasing speed of service delivery. Commercial (trading) perspective: From a commercial perspective, e-commerce provides the capability of buying and selling products, services and information on the Internet and via other online services. Learning perspective: From a learning perspective, e-commerce is an enabler of online training and education in schools, universities, and other organizations. Collaborative perspective: From a collaborative perspective, e-commerce is the framework of inter- and intra- organizational collaboration. Community perspective: From a community perspective, e-commerce provides a gathering place for community members to learn transact and collaborate History of E-Commerce The origin of commerce by exchanging goods occurred before recorded1 history, now commerce is a basic activity of goods trading and buying in everyday life. Entering into the electronic era, the way individuals and organizations do business and undertake commercial transactions have been changed. This indicates the movement towards electronic commerce. This means there is no paper work and physical interaction is limited, if at all. The emergence of electronic commerce started in the early 1970s with the earliest example electronic funds transfer (EFT), which allows organizations to transfer funds between one another electronically. Then another technology electronic data interchange (EDI) was introduced. It helps to extend inter business transactions from financial institutions to other types of business and also provides transactions and information exchanges from suppliers to the end customers. However, the early system development was limited to special networks such as large corporations and financial institutions, which are costly and complex to administer for small business. So EDI was not widely accepted as expected. With the progress of Internet technology and a highly developed global Internet community, a strong foundation of prosperous electronic commerce continues to be built. During the 1990s, the Internet was opened for commercial use; it was also the period that users started to participate in World Wide Web (WWW), and the phenomenon of rapid personal computer (PCs) usage growth. Due to the rapid expansion of the WWW network; e-commerce software; and the peer business competitions, large number of dot-coms and Internet start-ups appeared. Integrated with the commercialization of the Internet, Web invention, and PC networks these three important factors made electronic commerce possible and successful.