An escrow is a contractual arrangement in which a third party receives and disburses money or property for the primary transacting parties, with the disbursement dependent on conditions agreed to by the transacting parties. Examples include an account established by a broker for holding funds on behalf of the broker's principal or some other person until the consummation or termination of a transaction; or, a trust account held in the borrower's name to pay obligations such as property taxes and insurance premiums. The word derives from the Old French word escroue, meaning a scrap of paper or a scroll of parchment; this indicated the deed that a third party held until a transaction was completed.
Electronic business is any kind of business or commercial transaction that includes sharing information across the internet. Commerce constitutes the exchange of products and services between businesses, groups, and individuals and can be seen as one of the essential activities of any business.
Name your own price (NYOP) is a pricing strategy under which buyers make a suggestion for a product’s price and the transaction occurs only if a seller accepts this quoted price. What happens is that the seller waits for a potential buyer's offer and can then either accept or reject that 'named price' that the user had offered. As the Internet is continuously being developed and online marketplaces are becoming increasingly more popular, consumers have more choices in terms of product pricing. Popularized by the reverse auction pioneer, Priceline.com, such pricing strategy asks consumers to 'name their own price' for various products and services like air tickets, hotels, rental cars, etc. The first bid a consumer places and the subsequent bid increments express the consumer's willingness or unwillingness to haggle. "The economic argument is that the number of bids a consumer submits to win a product in a NYOP auction is determined by the bidder’s intention to trade off higher expected savings from haggling against the associated frictional costs". NYOP retailers do not post a price for their products, and the final price of the transaction is only determined via a "reverse auction process", and these are key features that distinguish hotels and travel intermediaries from NYOP retailers. Similarly, LetYouKnow, Inc. pioneered the application of its own patented matching method within confines of the reverse auction process, whereby consumers name their own price for new vehicles.
Disintermediation is the removal of intermediaries in economics from a supply chain, or "cutting out the middlemen" in connection with a transaction or a series of transactions. Instead of going through traditional distribution channels, which had some type of intermediary, companies may now deal with customers directly, for example via the Internet.
A letter of credit (LC), also known as a documentary credit or bankers commercial credit, or letter of undertaking (LoU), is a payment mechanism used in international trade to provide an economic guarantee from a creditworthy bank to an exporter of goods. Letters of credit are used extensively in the financing of international trade, when the reliability of contracting parties cannot be readily and easily determined. Its economic effect is to introduce a bank as an underwriter that assumes the counterparty risk of the buyer paying the seller for goods.
Online shopping is a form of electronic commerce which allows consumers to directly buy goods or services from a seller over the Internet using a web browser or a mobile app. Consumers find a product of interest by visiting the website of the retailer directly or by searching among alternative vendors using a shopping search engine, which displays the same product's availability and pricing at different e-retailers. As of 2020, customers can shop online using a range of different computers and devices, including desktop computers, laptops, tablet computers and smartphones.
Drop shipping is a form of retail business in which the seller accepts customer orders without keeping stock on hand. Instead, in a form of supply chain management, the seller transfers the orders and their shipment details either to the manufacturer, a wholesaler, another retailer, or a fulfillment house, which then ships the goods directly to the customer.
Business-to-business is a situation where one business makes a commercial transaction with another. This typically occurs when:
Amazon Marketplace is an e-commerce platform owned and operated by Amazon that enables third-party sellers to sell new or used products directly to consumers on a fixed-price online marketplace alongside Amazon's regular offerings. Using Amazon Marketplace, third-party sellers gain access to Amazon's customer base, and Amazon expands the offerings on its site without having to invest in additional inventory.
Consignment is a process whereby a person gives permission to another party to take care of their property and retains full ownership of the property until the item is sold to the final buyer. It is generally done during auctions, shipping, goods transfer, or putting something up for sale in a consignment store. The owner of the goods pays the third-party a portion of the sale for facilitating the sale. Consignors maintain the rights to their property until the item is sold or abandoned. Many consignment shops and online consignment platforms have a set time limit at which an item's availability for sale expires. Within the time of contract, reductions of the price are common to promote the sale of the item, but vary by the type of item sold.
Etsy, Inc. is an American e-commerce company with an emphasis on the selling of handmade or vintage items and craft supplies. These items fall under a wide range of categories, including jewelry, bags, clothing, home decor, religious items, furniture, toys, art, as well as craft supplies and tools. Items described as vintage must be at least 20 years old. The site follows in the tradition of open craft fairs, giving sellers personal storefronts where they list their goods for a fee of US$0.20 per item. Beginning in 2013, Etsy allowed sellers to sell mass-manufactured items.
An online marketplace is a type of e-commerce website where product or service information is provided by multiple third parties. Online marketplaces are the primary type of multichannel ecommerce and can be a way to streamline the production process.
Taobao is a Chinese online shopping platform. It is headquartered in Hangzhou and is owned by Alibaba. According to Alexa rank, it was the eighth most-visited website globally in 2021. Taobao.com was registered on April 21, 2003 by Alibaba Cloud Computing (Beijing) Co., Ltd.
Bidtopia was an e-commerce site originally launched in 2007 as a private auction site for Warehouse86 Ventures, LLC. Paul St. James, an owner of Bargainland, which had been the largest PowerSeller on eBay that same year, started the new enterprise in response to changes in eBay policies regarding high volume sales of brand name merchandise and restrictions on sellers with poor customer feedback. Bidtopia suffered the loss of one of its three distribution centers in 2008, and went offline and possibly out of business in early 2010.
Rakuten.com/shop was an e-commerce marketplace based in San Mateo, California. Previously known as Buy.com, it was founded in 1997 by Scott Blum. In 2010, it was purchased by Japanese company Rakuten, and rebranded as Rakuten.com. This business was shut down by Rakuten in 2020.
Customer to customer markets provide a way to allow customers to interact with each other. Traditional markets require business to customer relationships, in which a customer goes to the business in order to purchase a product or service. In customer to customer markets, the business facilitates an environment where customers can sell goods or services to each other. Other types of markets include business to business (B2B) and business to customer (B2C).
Tmall, formerly Taobao Mall, is a Chinese-language website for business-to-consumer (B2C) online retail, spun off from Taobao, operated in China by Alibaba Group. It is a platform for local Chinese and international businesses to sell brand-name goods to consumers in Greater China. It has over 500 million monthly active users, as of February 2018. In the last few years, it has opened its features to brands, not only for online sales but also for developing brand awareness. According to Alexa Rank, it is the third most visited website globally in 2021.
Recommerce or reverse commerce is the selling of previously owned, new or used products, mainly electronic devices or media such as books, through physical or online distribution channels to buyers who repair, if necessary, then reuse, recycle or resell them.
Konga.com is a Nigerian e-commerce company founded in July 2012 with headquarters in Gbagada, Lagos State. It offers a third-party online marketplace, as well as first-party direct retail spanning various categories including consumer electronics, fashion, home appliances, books, children's items, computers & accessories, phones and tablets, health care, and personal care products. The company also has a logistics service (EXPRESS), which enables the timely shipment and delivery of packages to customers.
There are many types of e-commerce models, based on market segmentation, that can be used to conducted business online. The 6 types of business models that can be used in e-commerce include: Business-to-Consumer (B2C), Consumer-to-Business (C2B), Business-to-Business (B2B), Consumer-to-Consumer (C2C), Business-to-Administration (B2A), and Consumer-to-Administration
