Commerce on the Internet

The article discusses the World Wide Web (Internet), focusing on using the WWW to support commerce-electronic marketing and digital publishing. Businesses are increasingly using the Web for advertising and electronic catalog based retail sales. Immediate benefits from the use of the technology include the ability to monitor and track the behavior of one´s customers, provided by access statistics the WWW server maintains. In addition, many aspects of managing customer interaction can be automated, for example, submission and collection of customer surveys, billing, and so forth. In the future, more organizations will use the net for innovative ways of providing online magazines and electronic commerce. Although the approximately 20 million Internet users represent only a small fraction of the world population, the dramatic growth of the market in recent years will continue to lure commerce online.<>