Research Paper on:
eCommerce Report

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only be postponed or potential sales will be lost. The market size is such that this cannot be ignored. In 2000 there were 300 million people in the world  accessing the internet, and there was a total of 407.1 million that had access to it (Hobley, 2001). Importantly foe the markets chosen, 41% of these were in the North  America area and 27.8% were in Europe (Hobley, 2001). The growth figure is very high when the access figures are compared to 1999, this was 201.5 million people (Hobley, 2001).  IT is projected that by 2003 there will be 400 million people using the internet (Hobley, 2001). This equates to a large number of shoppers. In e-commerce terms the total  market for e-commerce in 2000 was estimated at US$657 billion, this is predicted at increasing to US$6.8 trillion by 2004, equal to 8.6% of the worlds commerce (Hobley, 2001). The  US market alone is expected to be worth US$3.2 trillion and West Europe US$1.5 trillion (Hobley, 2001). . Even in less technological countries e commerce is growing in China there  has been a 400% increase and a market of US$40 million and over 150,000 product categories, and this is in a country where less than 5% of homes have  an internet connection (Anonymous, 2000). With markets of this size growing at this rate the internet is unlikely to replace traditional retail methods, but is certainly a route where  there is the potential for adding value to any companies activities. 2. Understanding E-commerce and its role including advantages and disadvantages The  current situation is one where there are certain types of purchases that dominate the market, books and magazines are dominating the sector with the manufacturing industry not making a great