Electronic commerce is turning into a new form of empowerment electrifying everything and everyone it touches in business. Buyers sell and sellers buy. A customer is a competitor and a competitor is a customer. On every front, opposites are blurring. It is, indeed, an exhilarating moment in the history of global commerce.
Electronic commerce is much more than online transactions.
In this new network economy the old laws are being torn apart. The coming of a new economic order was first noticed 30 years ago, when Peter Drucker spoke of the arrival of knowledge workers. This gave rise to the notion of the information economy because of the important role of information. But then two other factors intervened, which transformed the information economy into the network economy. The first is the shrinking cost and size of the silicon chip.