Research Paper on:
Consumers and eCommerce

Unformatted Sample Text from the Research Paper:
may be accurately seen as both. In this paper the role and development as well as the potential of e-commerce will be considered along with the way it is perceived  and the treats it posses. 1. The Current Use of the Internet and the Accessible Target Market E-commerce is defined by the  American Heritage Dictionary (2000), as "Commerce that is transacted electronically, as over the Internet". This indicates that e-commerce is much wider than simply the internet, however, in general usage the  term is usually utilised to indicate trade taking place over the internet. In this paper it is the common, rather than the technical usage that is used to define e  commerce. When the Internet was first becoming popular it had the reputation of geeks in anoraks in darkened rooms. However, there has  been a gradual shift in the culture of many countries, with the internet and related activities becoming acceptable and mainstream. To place this into context the wide scale use and  availability of computers and the internet need to be understood. In 2000 there were 10.1 million PCs sold throughout the world, a slight  decrease on 1999, down by 0.8% due to the increasing level of maturity in developed countries such as The US and Europe (Hobley, 2001). The same year it was estimated  that 300 million people had access to the internet up from 201.5 million in 1999(Hobley, 2001). By 2001 the estimated figure is 407.1 million, however these are not spread  equally through the globe, 41% of those with access are in the US, 27.8% are in Europe, 26% in the Asia Pacific area, 4% in Latin America, 0.8% in Africa