When Did Online Shopping Begin ?
The very first online World Wide Web server and browser were created by Tim Berners-Lee in the year 1990. It took another year to make it commercially available. Business-to-Business web shopping was initiated in the United Kingdom in the year 1981. This was followed by business-to-consumer web shopping in 1984 for the first time in the UK too. |
The first services which made commercial use of it were banking and an online pizza store by Pizza Hut in 1994. 1994 also marked the advent of SSL encryption of online information transmitting by Netscape which today has become vital for safe online shopping. It was the German company, Intershop, which brought about the earliest web shopping system. This was followed by quick successions of Amazon in 1995 and eBay in 1996.
The emergence of online shopping posed quite a few serious doubts in the minds of people. People felt there many chances of being cheated with the phenomenon of online shopping. Merchants too face the same risk in the form of fake purchases through credit cards which are stolen. But the risk of physical theft is removed by having a warehouse in place of a retail shop. Though Secure Sockets Layer (SSL) encryption eliminates the issue of intercepting credit card pins during their transition between the seller and buyers, identity theft still remains a big concern for consumers. Hidden cost is another hindrance for the consumers. Comparison might become easy but the full disclosure of the price f a commodity is still something users are uncertain about. Privacy of personal data is also what matters the online shoppers. Many who fill in their personal data are bombarded with telemarketers and spam due to the sharing or stealing of databases.
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