What is E-commerce?


Internet-commerce, buying and selling goods or services using the Internet and transferring funds and data to carry out such transactions. E-commerce is often used to refer to the sale of physical products over the Internet, but it can also describe any type of business transaction facilitated over the Internet.


E-business refers to all aspects of the operation of online business, while e-commerce refers to the transaction of goods and services.


The history of e-commerce began with the first-ever online sale: On August 11, 1994, a man sold a CD-ROM from Sting to a friend through his website NetMarket, an American retail platform. This is the first example of a consumer buying a product from a company on the World Wide Web - or "e-commerce" as we generally know it today.


Since then, e-commerce has evolved to facilitate product discovery and purchase through retailers and online markets. Individuals, small businesses, and large businesses have taken advantage of e-commerce, which enables them to sell their goods and services on a scale that would not have been possible in traditional sales.


Types of e-commerce


  1. Business to Consumer (B2C):

When a company sells a good or service to an individual consumer (e.g, it buys a pair of shoes from an online retailer).


  1. Business to Business (B2B):

When a business sells a good or service to another business (e.g. A business sells software-as-a-service for other businesses to use).


  1. Consumer to Consumer (C2C):

When a consumer is selling a good or service to another consumer (e.g, you sell old furniture on eBay to another consumer).


  1. Consumer to Business (C2B):

When a consumer sells their products or services to a company or organization (e.g, the influential exposes their audience online for a fee, or the photographer licenses their image for business use).


Examples of e-commerce for e-commerce can take a variety of forms involving different business-to-consumer transaction relationships, as well as different objects exchanged as part of such transactions.