The amazing and authoritative story of e-commerce: its origins, evolution and astonishing ascendence.

The amazing and authoritative story of e-retail: its origins, evolution and astonishing ascendance. Meet the pioneers and businesses that explored the possibilities of the emerging virtual world, review the technology innovations that paved the way, and journey the rocky road to domination for the online shopping industry.

As the founder of the UK’s industry association for e-commerce (IMRG), author James Roper was there from its inception…

‘An important and well-timed book about how the humdrum business of shopping was reinvented online. James Roper is a persuasive advocate for the role of collaboration in innovation, who was instrumental in jumpstarting the e- retail industry by methodically tackling every obstacle that blocked its early progress… In this book, Roper offers a fascinating glimpse at how a motley assemblage of inventions evolved, often in surprising ways, into today’s staggeringly powerful e-retail industry. Stuffed with eye-opening facts and statistics The Rise of e-Commerce is an essential read for anyone who is interested in the evolution of modern retailing.’

Nick Robertson, Co-founder and Ex-CEO, ASOS

• Cover
• Title
• Copyright
• Contents
• Author’s Note
• Acknowledgements
  • The Rise of e-Commerce Timeline
• Introduction
  • Summary: From dot to dominance in 30 years
  • 1985: Before the Apocalypse
    • Florsheim Shoes: irrefutable proof of concept
• Part I: 1990–2000
  • The Interactive Media in Retail (IMR) research project
  • Retailers under pressure to try new ideas
  • Technology soup
    • Home computers
    • The gadget glut
    • Just-in-time: telecommunications
  • E-retail takes Shape: the early 1990s
  • 1992: IMRG – from Research to Development
  • The Wibbly Wobbly Web
    • WWW: four breakthroughs
    • Netscape Navigator
  • 1994: The first secure online shopping transaction
    • Ten Summoner’s Tales
  • The Star-Spangled Banner Ad
  • Meanwhile, in the UK…
    • Kiosk kings
    • Barclay Square’s virtual mall
    • WH Smith: Self-help books, anyone?
  • 1995: Convergence
  • Windows of opportunity
    • Windows 95
    • Start Me Up
  • What’s in a (domain) name?
  • Payment
    • 3D Secure (3DS)
    • The Pay Barrier
  • 1997: e-Christmas.com
    • Cross-border Payments
    • Taxes, Duties and VAT
    • Code of Practice
    • 131 retailers from 9 countries and their 1,900 gifts
  • Approaching 2000 – the end of the beginning
    • Retailers’ expectations
    • Mystery Shopper
    • Impact on retailers’ stock market value
    • Freeserve and the free access bandwagon
    • Sex drive
    • 1998: Email or die
    • 1999: Television is dead. Long live television
  • Seeds of the dot.com bubble
    • Spam – email’s foot-and-mouth
  • TRUST! A virtual, technical and political minefield
    • Tony Blair: ‘The e-generation is with us’
    • TrustUK
    • Summing up the ’90s
• Part II: 2000–2010
  • 2000: The New Millennium! Bug, Bubble, Bust and Boom
    • Dotpocalypse
    • Dangerous stuff that t’internet!
    • The Distance Selling Directive 2000
  • The rise of the e-retailers
    • e-Motor Mania
    • Magic: Harry is chosen
    • ASOS: The UK e-retail legend
  • Bricks & Clicks: Hello, Hello, Is Anybody There?
    • My High Street at Home
    • Learndirect
  • Connectivity: broadband and the gigabit society
  • Shop around the clock – 24/7/365
  • Perpetual e-payment pain
    • Payment: top priority for 2002
    • The e-Retail Payments Charter: May 2000
    • Verified by Visa and Mastercard SecureCode
  • Shopping comparison sites
  • ISIS: The UK online shopping trust scheme
  • Data: sipping from the firehose
  • Music: downloads kill CDs
  • Happy Click Mouse
  • Pay For Performance (PFP): a new future for marketing
  • 24 July: Internet Shopping Day (2001–2007)
  • 2005: Dual pricing in rip-off britain
    • Sparks fly, currently
  • Deliverance! Where’s my stuff?
    • The IDIS Delivery Trust Scheme – 2005
    • Home Delivery Breakthrough: IDIS Delivery Manager – 2007
  • Payment: Light at the end of the e-payment tunnel
  • The Jersey Play: VAT and tax opportunism
  • The user-generated world: Web 2.0 – Social Media
  • Online (in)security
  • Mobile
    • iPhone (2007) and iPad (2010)
  • 2007–2010: The Omnichannel Years
    • The Great Recession
    • Summing-up the Noughties
• Part III: 2010–2020
  • Connectivity: Pledges spun, broken and scrapped
  • Who would be last to go Mobile First?
  • XB (Cross-Border): The Trillion Dollar Trade Route
  • IMRWorld
  • Jobs and the New Gig Economy
  • Zalando and the A–Z of e-commerce ‘Death Stars’
  • The Attention Model and the biggest boycott in history
  • 2014–2019: The Brexit Years
  • 2020 (MMXX): e-Dominance
    • E-grocery sprouts up
    • Royal Maelstrom
    • John Lewis undersold
    • Arcadia’s dystopia
    • Debenhams’ demise
    • Boohoo’s crocodile tears
    • ASOS: not a retailer – a destination
    • Amazon: king of the e-jungle
    • Summing-up the 2010s
• Part IV: Buckle Up
  • Blunders and worse
    • Kodak’s Click-Ups
    • Data breaches
    • The European Commission: Cookies, anyone? GDPR?
    • Unruled e-Britannia
  • High Streets Reimagined – again…
  • Dot, dot, dot…
    • Web 3.0, 4.0, 5.0 and counting…
    • Cloud-cuckoo-land economy
    • The digisphere is a foreign country
• Epilogue
• Works Cited
• Plates