What is e-Commerce? Definition, Types + 8 Examples

e-Commerce is a term that literally mean electronic commerce. It is intended to describe an electronic trading system. It is a business model that allows anyone to do the buying and selling process via the internet.

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What is e-Commerce?

So, E-commerce refers to all forms of buying and selling done online. Such as buying and selling goods or services. Including a money and data transfer system to carry out this transaction. 

The term E-commerce can also be used in the process of selling physical products, it can also describe all types of commercial transactions facilitated by internet media.

Whereas e-business refers to all aspects of online business operations, e-commerce refers specifically to the transactions of goods and services.

The history of e-commerce begins with the first sale online: on August 11, 1994 a man sold a CD by the band Sting to a friend through his website NetMarket, an American retail platform. This is the first instance of a consumer buying a product from a business via the World Wide Web or “e-commerce”.

And continues to grow until as you know today.

e-Commerce has evolved to become increasingly complex. Making products easier to find and buy through retailers and online marketplaces. 

Independent freelancers, small businesses, and large corporations all benefit from ecommerce systems, which allow them to sell goods and services on a scale not possible with traditional offline retail.

Global retail ecommerce sales was projected to reach $27 trillion as at 2020.

Types of e-Commerce

There are three main types of e-commerce models that can describe almost every transaction that occurs between business people and consumers. These include;

1. Business to Consumer (B2C):

B2C is the process by which a business sells goods or services to individual consumers (e.g. you buy a pair of shoes from an online retailer).

2. Business to Business (B2B):

B2B is the process by which a business sells goods or services to another business (e.g. a business sells applications as a service for other businesses to use)

3. Consumer to Consumer (C2C):

C2C is a process where a consumer sells goods or services to other consumers (for example, you sell your used motorcycle at jiji.ng to other consumers).

Examples of e-commerce

e-Commerce can work in various forms involving different transactional relationships between businesses and consumers, as well as various objects that are exchanged as part of these transactions.

Examples of e-Commerce known today are;

1. Retail: The sale of products by businesses directly to customers without intermediaries.
2. Wholesale: Selling of products in bulk, often from distributors to retailers who then sell them directly to consumers.
3. Dropshipping: The sale of products, which are produced and delivered to consumers by third parties.
4. Crowdfunding: The collection of money from consumers before a product is available to raise the initial capital required for purchases in the marketplace.
5. Subscription: The process of automatically repeating purchases of a product or service on a regular basis until the customer chooses to discontinue it.
6. Physical product: Any tangible item that requires inventory to be replenished and an order to be physically delivered to the customer when a sale is made.
7. Digital products: Downloadable digital goods, templates and courses, or media that must be purchased for consumption or licensed for use.
8. Service: A skill or set of skills provided in exchange for compensation. Service provider time can be purchased for a fee. Like us, selling SEO services or backlink services that will be paid for by customers who need them.