Online shopping is the business term used to refer to the process that customers go through to avail services or buy products that can be accessed with the use of the Internet. Some of the entities that act as retail stores in this process are the webshop, online shop, virtual store as well as the Internet shop. This process is a special kind of electronic commerce that is used for business-to consumer as well as business-to-business transactions. To know more about this, let us have a look at the history of the development of online shopping

History

Who invented online shopping? This process was invented by Rediffusion Computers employee Michael Aldrich in Great Britain in 1979. In order to prove that the process would work, Aldrich used an efficient technology that has Videotex. Two years after the launch of online shopping, the first business-to-business transaction happened with the initiative from Thomson Holidays. After this, both business-to-consumer as well as business-to-business transactions were widely used in the area in the 1980s.

Gateshead, England resident Jane Snowball was the first online shopper who purchased items from Tesco. The transaction happened in May 1984. Six years after this event, the first browser as well as a server that could be used to access the World Wide Web were introduced. In 1992, Book Stacks Unlimited, a website developed by Charles stock was known as the first web bookstore. After two years, Amazon, another popular online bookstore was created by Jeff Bezos. In 1994, different online shops were created. These include online banks as well as the online retail shop of Pizza Hut. To ensure that transactions were secured, the SSL data transferred online encryption were launched by Netscape.

Additional Information and Other Important Details

Some of the advantages of online shopping are the increase in commoditization as well as competitors’ rivalry. Other benefits that online shoppers can get from the process are the consumers’ bargaining power, the power of suppliers and the threat from new entrants.

Online shopping is one of the most convenient ways of purchasing items as well as availing services. To confirm the transaction, the webshop usually sends an email to the customer. Payments can be made through various ways like with the use of debit cards, credit cards, postal money order and gift cards. The items purchased would be shipped to the address of consumers. Additional charges might be added for the shipment of the products. Shipment might take a week to a month.