TYPES OF E-COMMERCE
There are a variety of different types of e-commerce and many different ways to characterize these types. Table 1.3 lists the five major types of e-commerce discussed in this book.1
For the most part, we distinguish different types of e-commerce by the nature of the market relationship—who is selling to whom. The exceptions are P2P and m-commerce, which are technology-based distinctions.
Business-to-Consumer (B2C) E-commerce
The most commonly discussed type of e-commerce is Business-to-Consumer (B2C) e-commerce, in which online businesses attempt to reach individual consumers.
Even though B2C is comparatively small ($140–$170 billion in 2005), it has grown exponentially since 1995, and is the type of e-commerce that most consumers are likely to encounter. Within the B2C category, there are many different types of business models. Chapter 2 has a detailed discussion of seven different B2C business mod-
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TABLE 1.3 MAJOR TYPES OF E-COMMERCE
T Y P E O F E - C O M M E R C E E X A M P L E
B2C—Business-to-Consumer Amazon.com is a general merchandiser that sells consumer products to retail consumers.
B2B—Business-to-Business ChemConnect.com is a chemical industry exchange that creates an electronic market for chemical producers and users.
C2C—Consumer-to-Consumer eBay.com creates a marketspace where consumers can auction or sell goods directly to other consumers.
P2P—Peer-to-Peer Gnutella is a software application that permits consumers to share music with one another directly, without the intervention of a market maker as in C2C e-commerce.
M-commerce—Mobile commerce Wireless mobile devices such as PDAs (personal digital assistants) or cell phones can be used to conduct commercial transactions.
1Business-to-Government (B2G) e-commerce can be