What is e- commerce?

Introduction to E-Commerce

E-commerce refers to commercial activities including the electronic buying or selling products and services which are conducted on online platforms or over the Internet.

E-commerce: electronic commerce:  is the buying and selling of goods and services, or the transmitting of funds or data, over an electronic network, primarily the internet. These business transactions occur either as business-to-business, business-to-consumer, consumer-to-consumer or consumer-to-business. EC can also be benefited from many perspective including business process, service, learning, collaborative, community.

What is e- commerce?

Ecommerce or "electronic commerce" is the trading of goods and services online. The internet allows individuals and businesses to buy and sell an increasing amount of physical goods, digital goods, and services electronically.

Electronic Commerce (e-Commerce) is a term popularized by the advent of commercial services on the Internet. Internet e-Commerce is however, only one part of the overall sphere of e-Commerce. The commercial use of the Internet is perhaps typified by once-off sales to consumers. Other types of transactions use other technologies. Electronic Markets (EMs) are in use in a number of trade segments with an emphasis on search facilities and Electronic Data Interchange (EDI) is used for regular and standardized transactions between organizations. The mainstream of e-Commerce consists of these three areas: Electronic Markets, EDI and Internet Commerce.

Types of E-Commerce:

There are four main models of e-commerce: Business-to-Consumer (B2C), Business-to-Business (B2B), Consumer-to-Business (C2B), and Consumer-to-Consumer (C2C).

1.      B2B Ecommerce: B2B e-commerce can be simply defined as the commerce between companies. In Business-to-Business type of electronic commerce system, companies do business with each other. a manufacturer selling a product to a wholesaler, a wholesaler selling a product to the retailer. Here manufacturer, wholesaler and retailer all are doing their separate businesses. The diagram illustrates the B2B model. There are 3 businesses- wholesaler, manufacturer and the retailer. Here manufacturer has a website using which wholesalers can purchase products from the manufacturer. When a wholesaler places an order on the website, the information regarding the order will be received by the manufacturer through the website. Then after processing the order, the manufacturer will send the product to the wholesaler. After receiving the products wholesaler can sell it to the retailers. This type of business is called B2B model.

2.      B2C Ecommerce: B2C model works as its name suggest. In this model, the company sells their products, goods or services directly to the consumer online. Here the customer can view products on the website that they want to buy and can order it. After receiving the order details, the company will process the order and then send the products directly to the customer. For example, Amazon, Flipkart etc are this type of e-commerce business model which we are using in our daily life. We can view products on the websites like Amazon, Flipkart and can order it. After receiving the order, the selling company of the products processes it and send it to us. Here a business company is selling their products to the customer with the help of an e-commerce website.

3.      C2C Ecommerce: Here a consumer sells products, goods or services to other consumers using the internet or the web technologies. The C2C business model helps us to sell our assets or properties like a car, house, bike, electronics etc via online to other consumers. OLX, Quickr etc are this type of business model. Here, if consumer-1 wants to sell a product then he/she can publish the details of the product on the website like OLX or Quickr. The consumer-2 can view the details of the product on that website that consumer-1 wants to sell. If consumer-2 is willing to buy the product that consumer-1 is selling, then the buyer can directly contact the seller and the product will be sold. Here products are selling directly from a consumer to another consumer via the website

4.      C2B Ecommerce: A consumer to the business model is a type of commerce where a consumer or end user provides a product or service to an organization. It is the reverse model of the B2C or business to consumer model, where businesses produce products and services for consumer consumption. In this business model, individual customers offer to sell products or services to the companies who are prepared to purchase them. For example, if you are a software developer, then you can show a demo of your software or skills that you have on the sites like freelancer. If a company likes your software or skills then the company will directly buy the software from you or can hire you for their services