E-Commerce

E-Commerce

1. Introduction to Electronic Commerce:

Electronic commerce is the most recent step in the evolution of business transactions. It replaces the swapping of money for goods or bartering (the swapping of goods for goods) with the exchange of information from computer to computer.

Electronic commerce, or e-commerce as it is otherwise known, is a very broad terminology. E-commerce enables organisations of all sizes and in all market sectors to improve their competitiveness. It cuts across geographical boundaries and time zones to save time and costs, to open up new market opportunities and enable even the smallest of companies to compete globally. E-commerce spans established processes such as bar code scanning and electronic data interchange (EDI), as well as newer arrivals, electronic mail, the Internet, the World Wide Web and mobile electronic commerce.

E-commerce is attractive because it reduces the cost of doing business. Sending a few bytes of data over a network is cheaper, faster and more convenient than sending a messenger or even making a phone call. E-commerce covers any form of business or administrative transactions or information exchange that is executed using any information and communications technology (ICT).

This embraces the main areas of activity:

· business to business

· business to consumer

· on-line learning

where e-commerce conducted between businesses differs from that carried out between a business and its consumer.

2. Business to Business:

The really big business on the Internet and the World Wide Web isn’t books and CDs but ball bearings, electronic components and other materials that businesses buy, sell and distribute to and from each other. Although this type of business to business trading may be new and attracting plenty of media and public attention, business to business has been trading by electronic means for nearly twenty-five years. The most famous method of business to business trading has to be the...