Using E-Commerce in Your Business

by Lucas Eastbrooke on February 7, 2010

Explaining how e commerce works is rather simple. E commerce is nothing but the exchange of goods and / or services electronically.

When you buy anything from any online store such as eBay, Amazon.com, you automatically participate in e commerce. Downloading music from sites such as Napster or iTunes is also included under the purview of e commerce. To begin with, let’s take a look at the different types of e commerce to help you understand it better.

B2B: B2B or business-to-business was the first form of e commerce that was brought into existence. Banks and other businesses began sharing and transferring files and information electronically as early as 1960s. This sharing of files and information could not expand, since there wasn’t one specific standard for conducting this business. Hence some businesses were unsuccessful in transferring with each other. The 80s was when B2B e commerce really took off with the setting up of a reliable standard which made it possible for all to use the same method and hence exchange files much more easily.

C2C: The most commonly used form of e commerce today is Consumer to consumer or C2C. If you’ve ever purchased something online from another person, rather than a business, either through an ad posting on a electronic bulletin board or an online auction, you’ve participated in consumer-to-consumer e commerce. Auction sites like eBay which allow users to put their goods online and sell to the highest bidder characterize online auctions which are the most popular form of consumer-to-consumer e commerce.

P2P: P2P or peer-to-peer e commerce began with Napster, which allowed users to share files without paying for it. Today you can find many similar websites and file-sharing programs and systems online.

B2C: Business-to-consumer forms a major portion of overall e commerce transactions and hence it must be necessarily mentioned while explaining the working of e commerce. An electronic download or an item that needs to be shipped, if purchased by anyone at an online store or website, is considered as e commerce. It is necessary to keep the following things in mind to explain how e commerce works.

You know you have engaged in e commerce when you do any one or more of the following: Exchange information online, Exchange money online, Exchange goods or services online. Simple concepts can be used to explain how e commerce works in your favor. For instance, if you wish to purchase a book, there are several online bookstores which you can use to compare the prices of that book and find the lowest one. The cost of shipping the book and the shipping time are some of the factors that you should consider before selecting a store which can send you the book in the shortest possible time and at the lowest price. There are besides surprising blueprints that help you reach the maximum benefit of this, like the Zero Cost Profits systems. However, Zero Cost Profits is more strongly connected to the marketing of your e-Commerce endeavors, but that is still a essential field.

All without having to stand in line, fight crowds, or spend any money for transportation or gas. So when you consider that you can comparison shop this way for small items and large alike, it’s easy to see the advantages e commerce offers you. Though we can go on to actually cover the various advantages of e commerce, you will experience them personally when you actually purchase an item using this method.

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