Internet

The Internet has been available for public service since 1983. With it’s rapidly expanding popularity, the number of internet users has quickly risen to over fifty million in a four year period (Bingi, Mir and Khmalah, 2000). One of many advantages of Internet use is the potential and accessibility as a tool for electronic trade. Electronic commerce also known as e-commerce, can be referred to as the purchasing and retailing of products or services over an electronic system. It is increasing at an exponential rate. Credit Card Company ‘Visa’ reports the amount of internet use has increased rapidly from $600million in 1996 to $13 billion in 1999 and is expected to reach $100billion by 2003 (Tedeschi, 1998; Anderson 1997). Future business transactions seem to be transforming from in store shopping to online shopping (Kotler, 2000). Amazon.com was the first company who recommend books from in-store into the World Wide Web (Machlis 1998; Munk, 1999). The Economist (2000) noted the name ‘Amazon’ has become increasingly popular with e-commerce and it is one of the few brands recognised in the whole world. It is also the most visited site in the USA and top two or three in the UK, France, Germany and Japan.

According to the book ‘Jeff Bezos: the founder of Amazon’ written by Ann Byers (2006). The company ‘Amazon’ was incorporated in 1994, in the state of Washington. It was named after the Amazon River, one of the largest rivers in the world. The logo of Amazon.com represents a smile of customer satisfaction and hopes to have every product in the alphabet. It started online as an online book store in 1995 by Jeff Bezos and sold its first ever book on the 15th of July, soon expanding into a much bigger retail company and claimed to sell millions of different products to more than 6.3 million customers in over 160 countries. Amazon has been proven to be a highly successful business with the value of $35.3 million in 2003. Despite losses, Amazon’s net income in March 2011

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