Electronic commerce or electronization of commerce?

Electronic commerce is a doubt with a bright future, for two reasons. First of all, the fashions that wear it in successive waves have a hard time getting through a summer, winter or spring. The cycles of these modes are getting shorter and shorter. The first fashion, B to C, was buried in the United States at the end of 1999, the beginning of 2000. Only Santa Claus still seems to believe in it, as the press presents him to us at the end of the year as the possible savior of B to C (" and if consumers did their Christmas shopping on the Internet this year… ”). It was followed by that of B to B which did not pass the summer of 2000, extended despite everything at the onset of winter by a comet tail, that of electronic marketplaces, today threatened to also disappear in the trap. to consultants. Then came the shooting star of m-business: soon seen, soon clouded by gloomy predictions about the future of UMTS. The observer gazes amusedly at these fleeting fashions, even captivated by the ability of e-magicians to pull so many rabbits out of their hats. The situation is less funny for investors because these beliefs - quite close to auto-intoxication - are not just speculations, they lead to investment decisions and above all to the means of financing. Basically, during the fashion an investor will be able to be financed without discernment, afterwards no one will want to finance it. It's not just trade that is binarized, its financing too.

But the permanent headlong rush of burning what was praised yesterday ends up damaging the credibility of the speech. So the latest fad today is to doubt e-commerce itself. Here we come back to the second doubt, a doubt of existence because no one knows exactly what this phenomenon we are talking about so much about is exactly. It is rarely found defined, even in scholarly articles. And when you try it, it’s Pandora’s Box: four readings and already an anthology of definitions. So prudence calls for closing the lid and acting as if everyone knows. Electronic commerce seems doomed to be obvious.

Evidence promised to the brightest future. Because the numbers prove it. Double-digit or even triple-digit growth rates are regularly announced. We haven't seen anything yet: exponential growth is for tomorrow. It is rare to find a chart where the growth curve does not mark a sharp inflection point at t + 1. Almost all of these numbers have no methodological basis: the reader does not know what they are taking. into account let alone how the calculations were made. But they are not without interest because they indicate the beliefs failing to measure the phenomenon. However, beliefs converge and we will not make an exception: electronic commerce is undoubtedly set to develop. How? 'Or' What ? Nobody really knows. But surely, yes.

We are thus faced with a paradoxical prescription: “of electronic commerce, you will doubt; of his future, no ”. That’s a bit of the current situation, a sort of mix between open skepticism about the phenomenon itself and a strong belief that it has a future. Hence the question this article attempts to answer: How can the object of doubt simultaneously be invested with a future?

To do this, first of all, we highlight the difficulty experienced in defining and measuring the phenomenon of electronic commerce. After recalling the diversity of definitions, the article successively proposes to limit the - often too broad - scope of the activities concerned and then to open, within this scope, the - often too restrictive - definition of electronic commerce. We are also proposing to abandon the category of electronic commerce, which by nature cannot account for the phenomenon that our beliefs agree has a future. This removes the paradox because it is not the phenomenon that is in question but its current form of enunciation.

The second part is descriptive. It provides an inventory of the various forms of said electronic commerce based on available figures, which are unfortunately not very reliable. A review of e-commerce information sources available on the internet can be found at the end of the article.