Electronic commerce, commonly known as e-commerce or eCommerce, consists of the buying and selling of products or services over electronic systems such as the internet and other computer networks.
The amount of trade conducted electronically has grown extraordinarily since the spread of the Internet.
A wide variety of commerce is conducted in this way, spurring and drawing on innovations in electronic funds transfer, supply chain management, Internet marketing, online transaction processing, electronic data interchange (EDI), inventory management systems, and automated data collection systems.Electronic commerce that is conducted between businesses is referred to as Business-to-business or B2B. B2B can be open to all interested parties (e.g. commodity exchange) or limited to specific, pre-qualified participants (private electronic market).Electronic commerce is generally considered to be the sales aspect of e-business. It also consists of the exchange of data to facilitate the financing and payment aspects of the business transactions.
Almost all big retailers have electronic commerce presence on the World Wide Web.
Some common applications related to electronic commerce are:
•E-mail and messaging
•Documents, spreadsheets, database
•Accounting and finance systems
•Orders and shipment information
•Enterprise and client information reporting
•Domestic and international payment systems |
