There are over 600,000 Irish people using the internet at work or at home . Soon every home in Ireland will have

internet access and every business will have the internet as well. In the past year alone about 6,000 users logged

on to the internet each month for the first time in Ireland and this shows that the internet is rapidly growing and

is providing a lot of additional opportunities for business , big and small.

Electronic Commerce is a revolution in the way that business is carried out. E- Commerce changes the business

environment; it leads to new products, new markets and new customer relationships. The potential is huge for

ecommerce to grow as past research shows that the use of ecommerce has enabled businesses to increase revenues

by around 10% to 20% and cut costs by 20 to 45 %.

When researching ecommerce for this paper, I came across one particular definition of ecommerce that I think is

important to mention because before I read the definition I thought ecommerce was just about buying and selling

goods over the internet.

The definition is as follows � an interchange of goods, services or property of any kind through an electronic

medium� I think the most useful thing about this definition is that is does not confine ecommerce simply to the

internet because even though the internet is of huge importance, it is not the only method of facilitating ecommerce.

Ecommerce can also be conducted over intranets (private version of the internet), using interactive telephones or TV,

and also covers activities such as technical support, software distribution, packaging tracking, advertising,

and b2b relation. You are probably wondering why I am mentioning this now, well because it shows that ecommerce

is an integrated part of a much broader social and economic change. A change which can be known as the �Digital era�.

E commerce has a large economic and social effect on areas such as:

Today for a few thousand euros anyone can become a merchant and reach millions of consumers worldwide,

what was once known as business to business transactions between known persons is now known as a web of

commercial activities which can involve a large number of persons that may never meet.

E-Commerce