their products to millions of people, 24 hours a day. (Baxton, 1999) Figure #1 shows the amount of revenues generated by the on the Internet dating back to 1996 as well as estimating possible revenues through the year 2002. With 1998, revenue equalling almost 74 billion dollars and experts predicting that it will climb to as much as 1,234 billion dollars by the year 2002, anyone can see that e-commerce is the wave of the future.Figure #1- Internet generated revenues in US dollars. Source: NUA Internet Surveys"Without a doubt, the Internet is ushering in an era of sweeping change that will leave no business or industry untouched. In just three years, the Net has gone from a playground for nerds into a vast communications and trading centre where some 90 million people swap information or do deals around the world. Imagine: It took radio more than 30 years to reach 60 million people, and television 15 years. Never has a technology caught fire so fast." (Edwards, 1998)Advantages of E-commerce„h Speed „h Savings „h International Distribution „h Customer Service The number one advantage that e-commerce possesses is speed. The Internet and World Wide Web gives businesses opportunities to exchange messages or complete transactions almost instantaneously. Even with the slowest connections, doing business electronically is much faster than traditional modes. With increased speeds of communication, the delivery time is expedited and that makes the whole transaction from start to finish more efficient. Also, you can find practically any product available for sale on the Internet, as one author put it from books and compact disks (from www.amazon.com) to French bread (available from www.sourdoughbread.com), (Buskin, 1998) Even more significant is the fact that information appearing on the Internet can be changed extremely rapidly. This gives business owners the ability to inform customers of any changes to the service that ...
