Courtesy : Mastersin Commerce (.Com)

E-commerce (electronic 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. # ISO certification in India

Defining e-commerce

The term was coined and first employed by Dr. Robert Jacobson, Principal Consultant to the California State Assembly’s Utilities & Commerce Committee, in the title and text of California’s Electronic Commerce Act, carried by the late Committee Chairwoman Gwen Moore (D-L.A.) and enacted in 1984.# ISO certification in India

E-commerce typically uses the web for at least a part of a transaction’s life cycle although it may also use other technologies such as e-mail. Typical e-commerce transactions include the purchase of products (such as books from Amazon) or services (such as music downloads in the form of digital distribution such as iTunes Store). There are three areas of e-commerce: online retailing, electronic markets, and online auctions. E-commerce is supported by electronic business.The existence value of e-commerce is to allow consumers to shop online and pay online through the Internet, saving the time and space of customers and enterprises, greatly improving transaction efficiency, especially for busy office workers, but also saving a lot of valuable time.# ISO certification in India

E-commerce businesses may also employ some or all of the following:

• Online shopping for retail sales direct to consumers via web sites and mobile apps, and conversational commerce via live chat, chatbots, and voice assistants;
• Providing or participating in online marketplaces, which process third-party business-to-consumer (B2C) or consumer-to-consumer (C2C) sales;
• Business-to-business (B2B) buying and selling;
• Gathering and using demographic data through web contacts and social media;
• B2B electronic data interchange;
• Marketing to prospective and established customers by e-mail or fax (for example, with newsletters);
• Engaging in pretail for launching new products and services;
• Online financial exchanges for currency exchanges or trading purposes.# ISO certification in India

There are five essential categories of E-commerce:

• Business to Business
• Business to Consumer
• Business to Government
• Consumer to Business
• Consumer to Consumer

Forms

Contemporary electronic commerce can be classified into two categories. The first category is business based on types of goods sold (involves everything from ordering “digital” content for immediate online consumption, to ordering conventional goods and services, to “meta” services to facilitate other types of electronic commerce). The second category is based on the nature of the participant .# ISO certification in India

On the institutional level, big corporations and financial institutions use the internet to exchange financial data to facilitate domestic and international business. Data integrity and security are pressing issues for electronic commerce.

Aside from traditional e-commerce, the terms m-Commerce (mobile commerce) as well (around 2013) t-Commerce have also been used.# ISO certification in India