E-Commerce

The most common description of e-commerce was defined by OECD (Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development) in 1997. According to the definition of OECD, e-commerce is a process that includes; • Determination of the company in line with the information collected in the online environment, • The opportunity for companies to come together in an online environment, • Processing payment, • Making the contract, • Delivering the product or service to the customer, • Providing maintenance and support services after the sale, etc. for creating customer satisfaction.

The e-commerce scope is expanding day by day. Briefly, e-commerce includes a variety of commercial activities such as shopping, banking, renting, and investing (Niranjanamurthy et. al., 2013). Furthermore, e-government applications, stock market transactions, digital content creation and distribution, crypto money transactions, transfer and protection of intellectual, industrial and commercial rights, etc. take part in the scope of e-commerce.

Affiliate Marketing: It is a method of making money from the internet by advertising commodities, services, websites or businesses and earning commissions from every successful sale.

Conversion: It is the visitor who comes to the site to become a customer by shopping. Conversion Rate: It is the ratio of visitors who turn into customers by shopping from the site, to visitors who do not shop.

Zwass (2003) states that e-commerce has five (5C) functions. These are connection, computation, commerce, collaboration, and communication. Functions of e-commerce provide some opportunities for companies. Connection: E-commerce provides connectivity at any time and anywhere using communication tools and platforms. Computation: E-commerce allows companies to make financial utility calculations. Commerce: E-commerce creates virtual market places, global worldwide supply-chain networks, and modern business models that provide customization and flexible pricing. Collaboration: E-commerce provides, collaboration environment, long term customer relations, and loyalty. Communication: E-commerce sees customer communities as a source of novelty, knowledge, and attachment. In communication, e-commerce offers information management, information support, etc. as interactive tools. In addition, e-commerce acts as a distribution tool for digital and physical product delivery.

Globalization is one of the important factors in the development of electronic commerce. Globalization has resulted in similarities in the demands and needs of consumers around the world, in other words, globalization has enabled people to speak the same language. Developments in information technologies have directly affected globalization. Country borders have disappeared with globalization. The low cost in electronic commerce, fast and effective customer communication, and the potential to create new products brought global competition. Global competition has created new opportunities and technological innovations in e-commerce

The World Bank states that the level of maturity in logistics services and structural factors make a positive contribution to the development of e-commerce. In this context, when looking at the Logistics Performance Index (LPI) published by the World Bank in 2018, logistics performance comes to the fore as an important sub-factor of the infrastructure and economic development level. According to the published report, both the e-commerce volume and logistics performance development scores of developed countries are quite high. According to 2018 data, Germany, Sweden, Belgium, Austria, and Japan are in the top 5

The main advantages of e-commerce for customers are given below (Sharma et. al 2019). Comfort: E-commerce offers the opportunity for customers to shop anywhere and anytime (24/7) without any physical interactions. Convenience: In e-commerce, consumers can find and compare a large number of products and services. Time-Saving: E-commerce allows many customers to shop at the same time without timewasting. Accessibility: Customers can compare products and prices in different virtual stores in seconds.

The disadvantages of e-commerce for businesses are as follows (Sharma et. al 2019; Büyükyıldırım, 2014); Payment Security Concerns: Customers concerned about security when using a credit card at e-commerce websites. Information Security Concerns: Customers worry about personal information security. Competition: E-commerce builds a highly competitive environment for companies. While this competitive environment creates a disadvantage for companies, providing better deals to customers.

E-commerce tools include two parts as classic and modern tools. Classic tools are tv, radio, telephone, fax, electronic fund transfer (EFT), electronic data interchange (EDI), e-payment, and monetary system (ATM, Credit cards, POS machines). Modern tools are the internet, FTP, e-mail, conference systems, mobile communication systems

We can summarize the benefits of EDI as follows; • Saving on time • Reducing errors and increasing accuracy • Reducing paper usage and archive load • Effective use of human resources • Providing coordination • Increased customer loyalty • Order time is shortened • Accelerate cash flow • Optimization of stock control • Enabling decision making • Increased profitability

Business to consumer e-commerce is the most common e-commerce type. B2C e-commerce refers to activities of selling products and services from business to end consumers. It provides a very wide customer base. Amazon.com is the most known e-commerce website in the world. In Turkey, Hepsiburada, Trendyol, and N11 are examples of e-commerce platforms.

The advantages of B2B e-commerce (Joseph, 2019); • Offers direct interaction without intermediaries • Promotion-oriented in sales • Long-term loyalty with customers • Distribution costs savings • Wide Access Area

In e-commerce, there are different payment systems as well as standard payment systems. These systems used in electronic commerce are divided into account-based systems and electronic currency systems. In account-based systems, customers pay through their personal bank accounts. In electronic money systems, the system allows payment when the customer has sufficient electronic money

The security in e-commerce has seven purposes. 1- Authentication 2- Authorization 3- Privacy 4- Integrity 5- Availability 6- Encryption 7- Auditing

Security threats in e-commerce are divided into three categories. First of them is the denial of service (DOS). Denial of service attacks covers spam and virus. The second security threat is unauthorized access that covers illegal, unwanted access to e-commerce systems. The third security threat includes thefts and frauds.

E-commerce companies use some strategies to prevent threats to e-commerce. The most known security strategies used in e-commerce are creating a strong security policy, educating people, using encryption, firewalls, and systems, precaution for database security.

The most important step in securing communication on the Internet is encryption. In general, encryption methods are divided into two: encryption with private key and encryption with the public key. SSL (Secure Sockets Layer) is used as a common method based on public-key encryption for e-commerce and, more generally, for web applications.

Personalization in Products and Services

Deep Data Analysis

Artificial intelligence is at the top of e-commerce trends and it has many effects in the field of e-commerce.

Fast Delivery

Augmented Reality

Although internet users make their e-commerce purchases mostly through laptop and desktop computers, mobile sales are expected to increase gradually.

Worldwide retail e-commerce sales reached $ 3.53 trillion in 2019. Worldwide retail e-commerce sales are expected to reach $ 4,206 trillion by 2020. This figure is expected to be $ 4,927 trillion in 2021, $ 5,695 trillion in 2022 and $ 6,542 trillion in 2023