The Ecommerce Guide

‘Ecommerce’ is defined as an electronic commerce. The ecommerce definition says that this is the process by which any business is carried out over a network of computers where by one sells and/or buys any product of service. Most people believe that ecommerce is only for the Internet as a computer network but it is actually for any computer network.

There are a number of computer networks where ecommerce was alive even before the Internet. To name a few, there was the Electronic Data Exchange that dates back to the 70s, and there are the Value Added Networks (VANs) through which a number of business to business orders were executed much before this type of business went to the Internet.

Success and Popularity

The Internet has brought tremendous success to ecommerce and that success has made it popular both as a term and as a practice. There are main sub-points in the ecommerce definition, (i) business to business – B2B, (ii) business to customer – B2C, (iii) customer to business – C2B, and consumer to consumer – C2C. Let us look into what each of these sub-divisions of the ecommerce definition implies:

1. Business to business – when two organizations (business houses) to business with each other the ecommerce is termed as B2B. Here the price is decided upon the quantity that is transacted.
2. Business to customer or consumer – As the name implies, this is business carried out between a company (business house) and the consumer directly. This happens in all the dotcoms and the online shops that the Internet made so popular. This is what most people know ecommerce as.
3. Customer to business – this is the process where a customer states what it needs and within a pre-defined period of time companies (business houses) bid to supply the required material/ service/ product. This is the way business such as freelancing are carried out.
4. Customer to customer – this is the process by which individuals sell things to other individuals. An example for such a site is eBay, where one individual can sell anything over the net to any other individual who want to buy the item advertised.

There are many other types of networks through which business is carried out in the ecommerce definition, but are not as popular as the above four. These are, Business to Employee (B2E), Government to Government (G2G), Business to Government (B2G), and Government to Citizen (G2C) and so on. Their names itself explains what type of business is carried out over these types of computer networks.

Tags: Ecommerce, Ecommerce Definition