Can E-Commerce really make an impact upon they business world? Will people be prepared to buy things without actually seeing them in real life? What must happen to the current paradigm to make the difference?

E-Commerce is being hyped as the next business revolution. Will it change things, just as the "out of town" supermarket did?

The wonderful world of E-Commerce

Analysts are forecasting a boom in e-commerce. Online shopping, education and training and financial services lead the list of areas that will increasingly confront us during the next few years.

Assuming that the current problems: security; accessibility (despite the huge numbers of PCs and modems that are sold each year not everybody actually has the capability to access the internet); and usability are solved then how will e-commerce change our lives.

We are already seeing some services that are the precursors of the new e-commerce world. EDS & HP have built a World Cup store which allows fans to purchase official World Cup merchandise online 24 hours a day, 7 days a week. As the World Cup is a global competition the continuous coverage is a major advantage - it would not necessarily be a good idea for a local football team. The Investext Group have unveiled a Web site that enables financial analysts, for a fee, to access a large up-to-date collection of company, industry and market research reports. As this is online it is not necessary to order a report and have sent by mail - the research can continue uninterrupted with the results being available earlier.

Sainsbury’s and Tesco are testing services that enable people to order provisions over the network and have them delivered, for a fee, to the house within a few hours. It will be interesting to find whether people use this for fresh produce.

It seems that what will happen is that the paradigm will change. Amazon Books are a good example of a network service that is different from an equivalent bookshop. Online you can see what the critics have said, what people who have bought the book have also read and read some extracts. Searching for information on a book is much easier than a normal bookshop.

Socially the biggest areas of change will be in education and training - it will not be necessary to go to a classroom, training will be done on the PC with online interaction with the tutor who will know exactly what has been read, the results of the tests, the trends. Studies have shown that this is the best way to learn. The better the workforce the better the opportunities for business to move into the added-value rather than just cost efficiency.

The biggest area of change will be in advertising and marketing. Rather than inferring the purchasing trends from the analysis of masses of data through data warehousing the marketing and advertising can focus on the customer through the information they have collected from the loyalty cards. As e-commerce adds to this "intelligence" the businesses opportunities will be identified - this will be the real change that e-commerce will make to business and society.