eCommerce

Modified: 2026-04-07 10:38 AM CDST

E-commerce began in the 1970s. Amazon and eBay revolutionized the area and made buying from home commonplace. Covid-19 stimulated eCommerce as buyers were reluctant or unable to shop in stores. eCommerce has become, for many, the first stop in their shopping. New methods of eCommerce are evolving including delivering goods to the home. Malls, too, have suffered greatly because of the combiation of Covid-19 and e-commerce. Recently, food delivery for groceries and meals has become important.

History of eCommerce

Started in 1970s
- Internet and other infrastructure enabled it
- EDI (Electronic Date Interchange) and EFT (electronic funds transfer) were instrumental
- Security protocols were also necesssary
- BtoB (Business to Business) eCommerce preceded use by general public
- Safeway and Albertsons were two grocery stores that sold products online
- 3.4% of all sales by 2007
- e-Commerce was a minor component of commerce prior to the internet
Brick and Mortar vs Online
- Brick and Mortar are traditional stores
- Advantages of Online
  - Search large databases
  - See prices
  - Build orders over time
  - Create wish lists
  - Compare prices with other online vendors
- FYI: Have you noticed that some items are now to find at Walmart? In 2007, I was looking for a ping-pong net. The associate I spoke to told me to get it online. That is still the case, see:
- Walmart Table Tennis search 2026
2024 Walmart Search (available in Magnolia Walmart)
Price above is back to $19.84 in 2026. It is only ping pong item in Magnolia's Walmart. All others must be ordered.
- Notice how many items are now only available online
Credit
- Establishing Credit
  - FICO Score
    - Payment History (35%)
    - Amounts Owed (30%)
    - Length of Credit History (15%)
    - New Credit (10%)
    - Type of Credit in Use (10%)
  - First Steps in Establishing Credit
    - Bank Account
    - Jobs
    - Residence History
    - Utilities in Your Name
  - Pitfalls
    - Beware of Hype (What is APR?, Fees?, Why will you need card?)
    - Read the Fine Print
    - Make more than the minimum payment
    - Don't take cash advances
    - Always review your statements (look for things you did not buy)
    - Don't max out your cards
    - Pay on time
    - Don't chase points or travel miles

eBay and Amazon

First successful sites
"deep pockets" required (meaning both had to have enough capital to sustain themselves before being profitable)
Our class's sale item on eBay in 2020:

Note the following about our item:
- Condition: New with Tags
- Time left: started with 7 days
- Pricing: Buy it Now = $50, Auction starts at $10
- Page Views: 12 by 30 March at 8:18 am (a few of those were mine, fyi)
- Seller Information: Shows feedback, no picture of me, also shows # of transactions, eBay status (green star), and feedback
- Contact Seller link
- See Other Items (none now, fyi)
- It sold for $10.50
Here's the package. It went out 4/6/20 for less than $3.00. eBay printed (and charged) for the shipping label.
I sold something in 2021 too
- Item will be two ticket stubs to the 2012 Arkansas vs University of Louisiana-Monroe football game
  - Fans will remember that the then #8 ranked Hogs lost that game ignominiously in overtime
  - Maybe me getting rid of these stubs will help the Razorbacks in the future :-)
  - eBay research suggests that $10 Buy Now would be reasonable along with a $5 starting price, Free Shipping of course
- Tickets listed on eBay on 16 March 2021. GO HOGS!
- They did not sell :-(

Payments

PayPal
- Founded as Confinity is 1998
- PayPal began in 2002 and then became part of eBay
- Spun off as own company in 2015
- Revenue # 25 on Fortune 500 in 2019
- Recently (2021), eBay replaced PayPal for its payments to sellers
Credit Cards (from Experian)
- Diners Club in 1950 was first card
- Credit itself is much older:
  - Code of Hammurabi established lending and credit (1750 BCE)
  - Became common in Middle Age Europe
    - Banks
    - Rulers used credit extensively
    - Credit is essential to e-commerce

e-Commerce Trends (2026)
- AI, AR and automation will improve customer experience
- Social media and livestream shopping will drive higher engagement
- New tools will offer more:
  - Personalization
  - Flexible payments
  - Subscriptions
  New e-commerce businesses should be aware of industry trends and market insights before investing or changing strategies
- Global sales will pass $3.8B in 2026 and exceed $4.9B by 2030
- No Code and AI-assisted tools will help businesses without having to write code
- Blockchain will help security/transparency
- Livestream shopping growing
- Augmented Reality (AR) can help customers decide on buying
- Voice search
- Personalized shopping
- Semantic search does not require exact keywords
- Mobile shopping (on smartphones)
- Flexible payment helps close sales
- Multiple vendors (composable shopping)
- More use of social media for shopping (86% cart abandonment)
- Subscription models (e.g., news)
  - Offers:
    - Convenience
    - Personalization
    - Exclusive perks (flash sales)
- Sustainability (especially locally sourced products)
- Better BtoB--becoming more self-serve
- Better understanding of consumer behavior (analytics)
- Customer feedback
- Watching competitors
- ROI
10 Essential E-Commerce and Retail Industry Trends
- Cross Border Commerce
  - 13% growth in one year
- Voice Search
- Mobile Commerce
- Video
  - Helps consumers make buying decisions
- Customer Experience
  - Easier checkout
- Frictionless Shopping
  - No:
    - Needing to create account
    - Complicated checkout
    - Single payment option
- Environmental Social Governance
  - How buying affects communities and the planet
- Content Marketing
  - Looking at products before engaging salespersons
- Product Content
  - Product information is important to customers
- Social Media Marketing

Advertising costs increasing
- Will require more professional and focused advertising campaigns
"Smarketing": chatbots, e-mail, social media
Better and more simplistic design
Better "delivery comfort"
- Quick, affordable, and local delivery
Reduced cost of entry
- eCommerce web sites: cheaper and more quickly set up
Offline to online transitions
- Moving sales from brick and mortar to online
Lockdown has increased online business
Amazon was losing clients but has made a comeback via:
- quicker shipping (2 to 3 days)
- running promotions
- better safety measures in its warehouses
  - because of Covid-19
- hired new employees
Shoppping Malls (video)
Sububan malls making a comeback?
- Occupancy rates in suburban malls is down from 2020
- Will these brick-and-mortar institutions survive?
  - See the comments in the page above.
    - Occupancy rates were down
Tomorrow's shopping mall is taking shape today
- Many stores now selling in physical locations and online
  - Those include: ship-from-store, buy online and pick up at store, and pickup in a locker
  - There is an Amazon Hub Locker in Magnolia at the Magnolia Travel Center
- Some malls now offering entertainment options including indoor ski slopes and art exhibits
- Many malls are being repurposed: high schools, senior housing, or office complexes
King of Prussia Mall (video)
What is Analytics?
- Types:
  - Predictive
  - Prescriptive
  - Diagnostic
  - Descriptive
- Uses:
Analytics
- Answers questions such as:
  - How to track how many people visit your website?
  - Where do your website visitors live?
  - How to find the most popular pages of a website?
  - What blog content do your visitors like the most?
  - What is the best way to track referrals to your website?
  - What marketing tactics drive the most traffic to your website?
  - Is your website mobile-friendly?
  - How can I improve your website’s speed?
  - How many visitors has your site converted into leads or customers?
Free shipping (or not)
- notice I offered free shipping for those jeans and for 2021 sale item
- psychological salesmanship, buyers more likely to buy with free shipping
- Web page above states:
  - 90% of consumers view free shipping as the top incentive that would encourage them to shop online more often.
  - 86% of shoppers abandon their shopping cart because of the cost of shipping.
  - 93% of shoppers claim they will take action to qualify for free shipping by adding items to their cart.
Geolocation and Customer Loyalty
- The increased use of mobile phones is disrupting e-commerce
  - Real-time location-based targeting: finding customers near vendor
  - Personalize communications based on points of interest: Add geolocation to other customer data
  - Deliver conditional messaging for customers who are out of town: Target advertising to customer's locations
  - Measure the effectiveness of marketing investments: Are customer loyalty programs working and where they are

E-commerce Data Collected from Buyers
- What data to collect (general analytics):
- Collecting too little data or too much is not advised
- Improving Data Collection:
  - Start with general analytics (see above), add:
  - Categorize customers
  - Win their trust
  - Track their real time behavior online
  - Analyze why they abandon shopping carts (note the metaphor!)
  - Use their complaints and suggestions to improve you site
  - Make sure data are secure!
  - Set up programs that reward shopping such as: discounts, flash sales, or memberships
- Amazon Example: (Video, shown earlier in the course, fyi)
  - Notice how the original, simpler algorithms outperformed more complex ones
  - Later, they created a new method, multi-layered neural networks, that took users interest in classic movies to predict a movie they would like to watch in the next week
  - Interestingly, users wanted new movies to watch in the next week
  - The model was simple and scalable, meaning it could be applied to all kinds of products, not just movies
- My new wallet (bought from Amazon)
- I'm now on my third one. First one wore out, second one became a dog toy. It's good that she did not find currency and credit cards palatable!

Since then, Amazon has sent me other wallets to look at:

Of course, I'm not going to buy another wallet (unless dog finds it again)
I bought the wallet to deal with the large number of cards I must carry
Now I keep getting e-mail trying to sell me similar wallets (see above)

Online Shopping Statistics 2026 (Data below come from this site)
- General
  - Sales: $6.86T in 2025
  - Users: 2.8B
  - Online sales: 22% of total sales
- eCommerce Stores
- Mobile eCommerce
- Cart Abandonment
- Technology and AI
- Black Friday and Cyber Monday 2025
- Gen Z and Social Commerce
- Payment and Checkout
- Emerging Trends

Difference in gender purchasing patterns:

Distribution Centers Workings (Video)

Steps

Picking

Staging

Packaging

Shipping

Parcel

LTL-Less than truckload

Containers

10', 20', 40'

Domestic

Truck or Rail

International

Air or Surface (ships)

FYI: One of my college jobs was a picker at a paint distribution center.

That was in pre-computer days and I picked orders.

I was amazed when I discovered our re-labelling process.

So, if a hardware store wanted some paint that they sold under their own name, I would have to take the right color paint (identified by a code) to the re-labelling room where they would take off the original label and put on the label of the hardware store.

Online advertising (Video)

Shows:

Kinds

Relevance

Reach customers

Drives search engines

Easy to start (for vendor)

Segment customers

Goals

Product visibility

Reaching customers otherwise hard to find

Market Segmentation

Main Types

Demographic:

Age,

gender,

ethnicity,

income,

education,

religion,

job role

Psychographic:

personality,

hobbies,

life goals,

values,

beliefs,

lifestyle

Geographic:

country,

region,

city,

zip code

Behavioral:

habits-spending,

purchasing,

browsing;

brand interactions,

brand loyalty,

previous product ratings

Other Types

Technographic:

personalization (for example Safari searchers typically use Apple products)

Generational and Life Stage:

marital status,

children,

home ownership

Transactional:

previous purchases or searches analyzed

Delivery to home

Walmart grocery pickup and delivery: Magnolia, AR

Walmart InHome
- Limited areas
  - My sign up :-) attempt and Walmart's response:
    
    Sorry, we don't deliver there yet.
    
    Be the first to know when InHome makes it to 505 Hazel Cir, Magnolia, AR 71753.
- InHome Delivery is now available Walmart offers InHome delivery service in many areas, including:
  - Atlanta,
  - Austin,
  - Dallas,
  - Kansas City,
  - Miami,
  - Orlando,
  - Phoenix,
  - Pittsburgh,
  - San Francisco,
  - San Jose,
  - Tampa,
  - Washington D.C.,
  - northwest Arkansas,
  - and southeast Florida.
- OMG! People are allowing vendors to open their vehicles and enter their houses!
- Americans receive an average of 121 parcels/year
- Kardas Xmas 2019 (Note how my family added to that average!)
Interactive e-mails
- Can browse, select, and buy directly from e-mail message
- these e-mails make it easier to buy because a click leads to a sale

Some Commerce Sites
- eBay
Go Back to Main Page

eCommerce

Sorry, we don't deliver there yet.