School of Information Systems

What is e-commerce?

Definition
E-Commerce and E-business should be a word that we are all should know especially in this    Covid-19 pandemic era, their meaning itself is the act of the activity of transactions which is done usually by computer networks including the internet and the internet. E-commerce is a part of     e-business which is focus on selling and buying process.  

Types of E-Commerce 

E-Commerce are divided into 8 based on the consumer target, the 8 types are: 

  1. Business-to-consumer (B2C), example: buy things from amazon.com 
  2. Business-to-business (B2B), example: company buy products from other company in large quantity through e-commerce platform. example: SPBU buy gasoline from Pertamina 
  3. Consumer-to-consumer (C2C) example: customer buy something from seller through Shoppee. 
  4. Business-to-employee (B2E), example: employee register for business trip through company website 
  5. E-Government, example: citizen submit tax through Government website (e-tax) 
  6. Mobile Commerce (m-commerce), example : Daniel bought a $50 Google Play Gift card through itemku.com.  
  7. Conversational commerce, example: Burger King is recommending a personalized menu list based on what they might like on a weekly basis through their application 
  8. Social Commerce, example: everything John opens his facebook, he sees a list of recommendation regarding moustache shaving tool. 

E-Commerce Auction 

E-commerce business also uses a major mechanism called “Auction” which means there will at least 3 parties or more in the activity, there are 2 versions of this activity, which is forward and reverse auction, in forward auction there are more than 2 buyers and 1 item but in reverse auction there will be only 1 buyer and more than 2 sellers/suppliers. 

E-Commerce role in daily life 

Most of us has already know about  e-commerce and use it almost everyday, in our daily lives and it also plays a quite important part in it, e-commerce helps to connect both buyers and sellers without any physical contact and only via a display screen we could do order or sell anything that we want, so there are actually a pretty simple method if one wants to start a E-Commerce business. 

How to Start an E-Commerce business 

  1. Determining on what to sell: there are actually a lot of things to sell, it can be based on your hobbies/skill or whatever is popular on the internet, but of course by choosing what is popular on the internet we actually need to surf the internet a lot and see what is on demands and what would sell good in this pandemic era.  
  1. Items Sourcing: the next step here would be deciding on what kind of program and how will you obtain the items that you are planning on to sell, either you source it from other people, dropship or manufacture it yourself. 
  1. Deciding on an ecommerce technology and solutions: the next step here would be deciding on how would you advertise your product, people will usually host a domain and choose a name that can easily tell people the items that you are selling. 
  1. Sorting payment methods: the next step of starting the business would be deciding on a payment method, most people use paypal but there are actually a lot of others, platform that can be used for start-up e-commerce businesses 

Conclusion 

E-Commerce exists to make business process goes smoother. It is quite necessary for people to know that c-commerce exist because it has proven itself to be useful in a lot of ways in our daily life. 

 

 

Vincent Firstian