TABLE OF CONTENTS Of the most important areas affected by advances in technology has been the growth of electronic commerce, referred to as electronic marketing or e-marketing or more generically as e-business' or e-commerce . E-commerce is a collective term to describe a variety of commercial transactions that make use of the technologies of electronic processing and data transmission. The majority of these are based on the internet and its hybrids such as the extranet and intranet.
Electronic commerce is defined as the use of electronic technologies and systems so as to facilitate and enhance transactions between different parts of the value chain. All types of companies and all sizes of companies can make affective use of e-commerce. Smaller firms particularly seem to be particularly adept at using the new technology successfully (see Thelwall, 2000, pp. 149 159).
This definition focuses on the fact that all electronic commerce is designed to improve the business transaction processes. E-commerce would not have grown to the extent it has and will continue to do, had it not provided potential improvements to the marketing process. Often these potential improvements, as already stated, will be in the form of cost reductions for the marketer, but much more important, are those improvements that can be passed on to the customer. Put another way, the growth of e-commerce would not have been possible without the growth of the e-customer . For example it will be some time before e-commerce becomes a major mass' force in carrying out business transactions...
