Communication Technology Update and Fundamentals, 11th Edition

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Electronic Commerce

Tim Brown, Ph.D^*

The Internet and other communication technology certainly offer us many avenues to learn more about our world, as well as to express and entertain ourselves. Those technologies have also changed the way we think of business, as well as how business impacts our daily lives. It is obvious that we have the ability to purchase things online—a recent Pew Internet and American Life report shows that two-thirds of Americans who are on the Internet have purchased something online (Horrigan, 2008). Doing business through communication technology affects our economy in other ways, sometimes just by having a better product to offer or because of changes in the way that product is offered: say, a digital download ...