The term of virtual enterprises is not new for the world of sales. By the end of the 90s a lot of companies started to implement new technologies in their strategies in order to become more competitive. As the Internet became the disruptive innovation for that time and has blown the market, the companies started to use the World Wide Web for their best. Speaking about the birth of the virtual business, it should be mentioned about common misunderstanding that e commerce or electronic commerce is the same as virtual business or internet shop. The meaning of electronic commerce has changed over the last 30 years. Originally, electronic commerce meant the facilitation of commercial transactions electronically, using technology such as Electronic Data Interchange (EDI) and Electronic Funds Transfer (EFT). These were both introduced in the late 1970s, allowing businesses to send commercial documents like purchase orders or invoices electronically. The growth and acceptance of credit cards, automated teller machines (ATM) and telephone banking in the 1980s were also forms of electronic commerce. Another form of e-commerce was the airline reservation system typified by Sabre in the USA and Travicom in the UK. Online shopping was invented in the UK in 1979 and during the 1980s it was used extensively particularly by auto manufacturers such as Ford, Peugeot-Talbot, General Motors and Nissan. From the 1990s onwards, electronic commerce would additionally include enterprise resource planning systems (ERP), data mining and data warehousing. Perhaps it is introduced from the Telephone Exchange Office, or maybe not. The earliest example of many-to-many electronic commerce in physical goods was the Boston Computer Exchange,1 a marketplace for used computers launched in 1982. By the end of 2000, a lot of European and American business companies offered their services through the World Wide Web. Since then people began to associate a word "ecommerce" with the ability of purchasing various goods through the Internet using secure protocols and electronic payment services.
1.2. The analysis of Internet users market
Since that time the world have made a lot of steps forward to the internet life. The business through the Internet became common even for the housewives or children over 18 years. Different terms for the system had been given, but all of them mean the business through the Internet. The most common terms are: e-commerce, internet business, e-shop, e-auction, e-procurement, e-malls, virtual communities and virtual business. Geographically, the biggest amount of e-shops are located in the territory of the USA, speaking about Latvia, it is obviously clear that internet market it’s only on the birth stage here. The big amount of small firms even hasn’t got their websites, what is almost unbelievable to Europe and US. The term of virtual business is only entering the market here. The Internet in Latvia began to experience significant growth in 1999, as the consolidation of regional internet providers began to drive down prices for dial-up access. By 2000, there were 75,000 internet users and about a dozen e-commerce shops in Latvia. The tendency and the numbers of internet users enlargement, who are the potential customers for every company is illustrated in the table below. …
