http://www.sajim.co.za/vol1.nr2.01_09_99/internet.main.asp?prin


   
  Product Reviews Vol.1 No.(2/3) September 1999

Internet commerce ... transacting online 
Pieter van der Walt 
Altron 
pvdwalt@ams.altron.co.za 

The commercial advent of the Web since 1995 has opened up an extremely viable outlet for 
manufacturers and retailers of literally everything from food, clothes, books, music, and 
computers to services. With the new millennium on our doorstep, the online shopping mall 
is starting to take shape and is slowly starting to reconfigure the supply chain of consumer 
goods and services. It has also dramatically started to alter consumers' shopping habits. 
With only a small percentage of the world's population online (in South Africa 
approximately 1.2 million have access to the Internet), retailers still have a long way to go 
to exploit the digital retailing territory. It is also becoming more important to understand 
why consumers are going to the Web and how to satisfy Generation Y. 

Internet commerce, e-commerce or electronic commerce is a very broad term and the 
process of Internet commerce that takes place between businesses differs from that carried 
out between a business and its consumers. There are a number of examples of business-to-
consumer models on the Internet, for example Amazon (http://www.amazon.com/) and Dell 
(http://www.dell.com/ or http://www.dell.co.za/). Locally, there are also Kalahari.net 
(http://www.kalahari.net/), selling books, CDs and videos like Amazon, and Megashopper 
(http://www.megashopper.co.za/), selling groceries, furniture and computers online. The 
process is simply described by a consumer browsing through an online catalogue of 
products, selecting the items he or she has an interest in, supplying payment and delivery 
details and the items are delivered by courier. 

Business-to-business I-commerce can take many forms. The most common, which have 
been around for some years, is electronic data interchange or EDI as is a format used for 
transferring business information across private networks. EDI has been created for 
businesses that have regular contact with each other; no money actually changes hands 
electronically once an EDI transaction takes place. It is a way for businesses to 
automatically transfer and acknowledge receipt of order electronically without or with very 
little human intervention. Another scenario in the b-to-b model is businesses that are 
opening up their financial systems and allowing other businesses to place orders 
interactively using the Internet (in this context referred to as an extranet) directly into their 
financial systems. Once again no money exchanges hands electronically, and the business 
that placed the order will be invoiced for payment.  

Another model that is starting to become very popular is the consumer-to-consumer model 
and is simply defined as consumers doing business with consumers. Web sites such as E-
Bay (http://www.ebay.com/) and locally Aucor (http://www.aucoractive.com/) allows 
consumers to place articles up for sale and other interested consumers can then bid online 
for that particular article. The consumer that offer the highest bid for that article within a 
certain amount of time is then awarded the article and payment and delivery details are 



exchanged.  

In summary, Internet commerce can be very broadly defined as any online, computer-based 
interaction between two parties, using a telecommunications network, for the purposes of 
conducting business. And this way of transacting in an online environment has been seen by 
many as the biggest single economy that will continue to create unprecedented growth 
opportunities for people, companies and countries globally (Cisco, 1999).  

Countries are realising that the Internet and the way of doing business online are already 
having an influence on their economies and social-economic level. Recently, the South 
African Department of Communications launched a discussion paper on Internet commerce, 
addressing a number of issues, such as building trust (the securing of data, privacy, digital 
signatures, certification, consumer protection and cyberfraud), ground rules (taxation, duties 
and intellectual property rights), infrastructure (information and communications 
technologies, telecommunications market and pricing regulation, Internet services and 
banking and financial services) and maximising benefits (economic and social impact, 
market access and business opportunities and impact on the workforce), thereby, urging all 
stakeholders to partake in establishing a policy for South Africa. 

In the next column we will begin looking at the Internet commerce process and start to 
identify specific products that can be used to enable consumers to transact online. In 
anticipation have a look at the following Web site: OpenMarket at 
http://www.openmarket.com/. 

References 
1. Cisco. 1999. Cisco releases study measuring jobs and revenues tied to the Internet 

economy. http://www.cisco.com/warp/public/146/june99/23.html  
2. Department of Communication. 1999. The e-commerce debate. http://www.ecomm-

debate.co.za/  
3. The Internet Economy indicators. http://www.internetindicators.com/  

  

   

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