What is E-commerce?
What is E-commerce?
The activity of electronically buying or selling products on online services or over the Internet is called e-commerce. E-commerce draws on technologies such as mobile commerce, electronic funds transfer, supply chain management, internet marketing, online transaction processing, electronic data interchange (EDI), and automated data collection systems.
E-commerce typically uses the internet for at least a part of a transaction’s life cycle but may also use other technologies such as email. The typical e-commerce transactions include those that are related to buying products or services such as downloading music from iTunes.
There are three areas of e-commerce:
1. online retailing
2. electronic markets
3. online auctions.
E-commerce businesses may also employ some or all of the following:
- Online shopping is the process by which companies offer goods or services to consumers via a website, web-based application, social media site or an app.
- Online marketplaces are places where people can buy and sell things. Some of these marketplaces are for business-to-consumer (B2C) sales, while others are just for consumer-to-consumer (C2C) sales.
- B2B transactions
- Gathering and using demographic data obtained from web contacts and social media.
- Electronic data interchange
- Marketing to customers by email or fax
- Participating in pre-release activities before a company releases its products or service.
- Foreign currency trading is typically conducted over the internet in order to facilitate international trade.
Some common applications related to electronic commerce are:
- B2B e-commerce (business-to-business)
- B2C e-commerce (business-to-consumer)
- Conversational commerce : e-commerce via chat
- Digital Wallet
- Document automation in supply chain and logistics
- Electronic tickets
- Enterprise content management
- Group buying
- Instant messaging
- Internet security
- Online auction
- Online banking
- Online office suites
- Online shopping and order tracking
- Online transaction processing
- Pretail
- Print on demand
- Shopping cart software
- Social networking
- Teleconference
- Usenet newsgroup
- Virtual assistant
- Domestic and international payment systems
