E-commerce is the activity of electronically buying or selling of products on online services or over the Internet. E-commerce draws on technologies such as mobile commerce, electronic funds transfer, supply chain management, Internet marketing, online transaction processing, electronic data interchange (EDI), inventory management systems, and automated data collection systems. E-commerce is in turn driven by the technological advances of the semiconductor industry, and is the largest sector of the electronics industry.
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.
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. The seller is responsible for marketing and selling the product, but has little or no control over product quality, storage, inventory management, or shipping. By doing this, it eliminates the costs of maintaining warehouses – or even a storefront – purchasing and storing inventory, and employing necessary staff for such functions. As in any other form of retail, the seller makes profit on the difference between an item's wholesale and retail price, less any pertinent selling, merchant, or shipping fees accruing against them.
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 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.
Product information management (PIM) is the process of managing all the information required to market and sell products through distribution channels. This product data is created by an internal organization to support a multichannel marketing strategy. A central hub of product data can be used to distribute information to sales channels such as e-commerce websites, print catalogues, marketplaces such as Amazon and Google Shopping, social media platforms like Instagram and electronic data feeds to trading partners. Moreover, the significant role that PIM plays is reducing the abandonment rate by giving better product information.
Etsy, Inc. is an American e-commerce company focused on handmade or vintage items and craft supplies. These items fall under a wide range of categories, including jewelry, bags, clothing, home décor and 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.
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.
Channel conflict occurs when manufacturers (brands) disintermediate their channel partners, such as distributors, retailers, dealers, and sales representatives, by selling their products directly to consumers through general marketing methods and/or over the Internet.
Taobao is a Chinese online shopping platform. It is headquartered in Hangzhou and is owned by Alibaba. According to Alexa rank, it is the eighth most-visited website globally in 2021. Taobao.com was registered on April 21, 2003 by Alibaba Cloud Computing (Beijing) Co., Ltd.
Business-to-employee (B2E) electronic commerce uses an intrabusiness network which allows companies to provide products and/or services to their employees. Typically, companies use B2E networks to automate employee-related corporate processes. B2E portals have to be compelling to the people who use them. Companies are competing for eyeballs of their employees with eBay, yahoo and thousands of other web sites. There is a huge percentage of traffic to consumer web sites comes from people who are connecting to the net at the office.
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.
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
