The electronic economy is a virtual platform intended for business operations by companies and enterprises. On this platform, transactions are conducted, information and business and strategic values are exchanged, and contacts are established between economic entities. All these processes are independent of transactions concluded in the traditional way, although they are sometimes partially linked to them – e.g., when a company operates in traditional trade in parallel, and the Internet is one of its distribution or advertising channels.
The electronic economy is the result of changes that have occurred in the structure of economic activity under the influence of the application of modern technological solutions. The birthplace and development site of information technologies is the United States. It is in this country that these processes are the most advanced and develop the fastest. It is worth noting that the electronic economy is never in a phase of stagnation, and this causes the United States to be the most technologically advanced country in the world.
The sustained favorable economic climate meant that between 1995 and 1999, GDP in the USA grew by 4 percent, and the average productivity growth was 4.5 percent. The result of this was a significant drop in unemployment, which by the end of the 90s was only 4.5 percent – in the opinion of experts, this state of affairs was caused by the great Internet “boom” of the late 90s and the first weeks of 2000. In 2003, spending on Internet advertising in the USA also increased significantly, by around 20 percent. As shown by a report prepared by PricewaterhouseCoopers and the Interactive Advertising Bureau, American companies spent almost 7.3 billion USD for this purpose.
The article comes from the magazine “e-Fakty” 2/2004.