The e-Commerce is one of the sectors that are experiencing in recent years the highest growth rate, a phenomenon in constant development that uses a platform now widely disseminated globally and able to connect thousands of commercial realities with millions and millions of users: Internet. Many are the salient features of electronic commerce: it is not in fact merely an online purchase of goods or services but a complex and articulated set of activities in which the confluence of elements of economics, sociology, psychology (besides of course the technology) and that was marked over time by profound changes both under structural and substantial point of view.

Currently, the turnover of online trade is calculated on the basis of billions of dollars, with a continuous increase year after year. Even if with some difficulty, and especially thanks to a few players, e-commerce has been able to cope in the recent past inflections recorded in other economic sectors, both at the time of the explosion of the dotcom bubble (in 2000) and after September 11 (2001), it also seems to be able to overcome indemnify the current period of stagnation that characterizes the European and US economy. The increasing penetration of Internet (with the parallel diffusion of broadband), along with a gradual acquisition of know-how by the various players and greater familiarity of users with virtual shop-windows and carts, as well as with payment systems such as credit card, seem to be the main factors that contribute to determine the success of e-Commerce.