Simply defined, electronic commerce is a system of online shopping and information retrieval accessed through networks of personal computers. E-commerce challenges traditional organizational practices, and opens up a vast array of issues that companies must address.

In assessing the implications of e-commerce in terms of marketing, it is important to understand its impact in respect to marketing strategy formulation. As the Internet, and in turn E-commerce has developed, and continues to evolve and grow, it is vital that any company, in any particular industry, must base its strategic planning around such a rapidly growing medium.

However, e-commerce provides companies with a unique medium to analyze, requiring information relating specifically to its environment. E-commerce ideals place particular emphasis on environmental factors, due to the high rate of change and development it constantly undergoes.

Technology is ever-changing, and as such E-commerce is absolutely influenced by its evolution. Rapid changes in recent technological advances have bought about the Internet and in turn E-commerce, and such dramatic evolution is likely to continue. In terms of strategic formulation, technology is a huge issue that any organization must be aware of when realizing e-commerce's strategic implications. For example, an organization thinking of developing a Web site must be strongly aware of technological issues that pertain to such initiations.

The potential market that the Internet provides has little or no restrictions by either geography or time, and therefore poses a huge impact on any company considering e-commerce in its strategic marketing formulation. Opportunities in e-commerce are enormous, as present growth and development have proved.

The Internet provides a virtual marketplace, providing huge opportunities in the marketing strategies that a company may wish to develop. The trends of internet users and in fact the use of e-commerce in general is extremely valuable information that the company must be aware of. By knowing how the advances of the Internet are being used, a marketing strategy can be focused keeping these ideals in mind.

By having an understanding of users of the Internet and e-commerce resources, the marketing strategy can be further advanced, and tailored in a favorable direction to the company. Various factors make-up the analysis of the consumer when addressing both E-commerce and the more tradition means of commerce. Ideals such as demographics and cultural influences must be identified when assessing the characteristic of any market. It is important that the users of Internet technology are identified, and the relevant consumer attributes understood. In terms of E-commerce, this aspect of the environment provides a basis for how an organization would structure their marketing strategies based on the attributes that make up the general Internet consumer. Only by careful analysis of all these factors can a company build a strong and effective internet marketing strategy.