Online shopping

Online shopping a form of e-commerce, is the buying of goods or services through sellers over the internet. There are various types of online shops that simulate "real life" shopping experiences including online auctioning (Ebay), site-hosted personal storefronts (Etsy), and physical stores that host their own online storefront. Through secure socket layer encryption customers are able to communicate credit card information and other sensitive data safely and securely. Products are delivered using shipping services such as UPS or USPS.

History

Online shopping has been a implementable and bankable idea since the inception of end-user information systems. Videotex, a two-way messaging service displayed through television monitors, was the first medium for the idea of implementing "teleshopping". Companies in the UK (Prestel, Oracle, Viewdata) and companies in the USA (The Source and Compuserve) did much research in the field of videotex. The concept of "teleshopping" (shopping at a distance, not to be confused with infomercials, a form of television shopping) was introduced by Michael Aldrich in 1979. It was not referred to as "on-line shopping" because there was no Internet at the time. The original system developed by Aldrich's team was not based in computers but in telecoms and consumer electronics industries, and was initially only used for business-to-business transactions (B2B). In 1990s with the mass installation of home computers, business-to-consumer (B2C) commerce began.

Tim Berners-Lee invented the world-wide-web in 1990. This provided the avenue for business-to-consumer transactions, allowing the average consumer to browse content posted on the world wide web in their own homes. In 1994 the internet browser Netscape introduced Secure Socket Layer encryptions, which allowed for the secure transmission of messages over the internet. This meant transactions were able to take place through the world-wide-web without risk of stolen information. The same year Pizza Hut began to offer the online ordering services, with many companies after following suit.

Amazon

In 1995 Amazon.com began to package and sell books online. Amazon was able to outclass the local bookstore by providing a larger and more complete selection through their online store. While it initially only sold books, the company's endgame was to sell every product "from A-to-Z". In 4 and a half years, Amazon.com became the most recognized online-retailer by online shoppers. In 1999, Jeff Bezos, founder of Amazon.com, was named person of the year by Time Magazine for popularizing online shopping.

Online Auctioning

The same year Amazon began to sell books online, 1995, Pierre Omidyar and Jeff Skoll started an online auctioning company called eBay. The company made it's goal to connect people, and not to sell them things like any other online shop. Customers are able to browse through items by category and place bids on timed auctions. Originally only selling collectibles from customers, eBay branched out, forming partnerships with companies such as Disney, GM, and Sun; allowing these corporations to auction off items on their website.

How to shop

Customers generally pay for goods and services online through credit/debit cards. Other methods include Paypal (an online money transferring site), in person transactions (however this defeats the purpose of online shopping), or other money transferring websites (Skrill, Paymate). In addition to the cost of the products purchased, customers generally must pay for the shipping of the product as well, unless the shopper buys over a certain amount through a company that provides free shipping (however companies such as Zappos.com exclusively offer free shipping).

Ethical concerns

Online shopping has taken the physically taxing process of browsing and human-interaction out of the business-consumer equation. However with ease of process comes a lack of security within business transactions. Customers are generally not able to pay for shipped products with physical cash and must give their credit card informations to the websites they are purchasing from. Because of this customers usually only place online orders from reputable sources such as Amazon or Zappos.com. In addition to credit card information full-name, address, and phone number are also divulged to these companies. Though it is generally secure to trust the seller with sensitive information, certain hackers are also interested in this information and will target companies for this information. This may not be as big of an issue with the advent of SSL, however before Netscape had implemented this security system online shopping was not a common practice.

PS3 credit card hacking scandal

In 2011 Sony had to temporarily shut down it's Playstation Network online services because an unauthorized person had hacked their systems and had access to vital customer information. Credit card information, purchase history and other profile information were all at possible risk. Sony shutdown their online network for a month and hired outside security firm in order to investigate the security breach.