E-Commerce

Introduction

E-commerce, we also can call it electronic commerce or EC. E-commerce is one of the medium to purchasing, selling and trading goods between buyer and seller, but they are using the application of communication and information sharing tools to communicate and share the information. (Alrawi, Ekbia & Jaber, 2008) Some of the companies use the e-commerce to achieve their objective. E-commerce is one of the methods to do the business. E-commerce is not the traditional way to do the business, it was using the communication technology to communicate with the customers and trading the goods or services to them. For example, customers can buy the products through the television shopping channel, multi-channel television services and online marketplace.

Categories in E-Commerce

E-commerce can categorise into 4 types, B2B (Business to Business), B2C (Business to Consumer), C2B (Consumer to Business) and C2C (Consumer to Consumer). First is the B2B, by using the e-commerce, companies can doing business with each other. Through the e-commerce website, the companies can know the information of other companies’ information like, what are the companies selling, where the material or products come from, where their companies locate at and other. Through the e-commerce, both of the companies can communicate with each other to discuss the pricing and when can get the product. They also can discus about the quality. Through internet, the seller and the customer can save the cost and save the time. For example, customer can negotiate the price through chatting with seller, the customer can save the time to go out and shopping. Besides, the seller also can save the cost to rent a shop and may be not take the risk to buy as much as stock to ready sell.

Next is B2C and C2C, those two categories I wish to explain together because both them normally can founded together. There are some online shopping websites provide the channel to companies and consumers to sell their products. For example, Lazada, Lelong, Mudah, TaoBao, Alibaba and other. Those websites provided a very good channel to let the companies and consumers to sell their products. E-commerce website not only provides the channel to let them, it also provides a very systematic and safe paying system to them. Besides that, companies and consumers can upload there information about the products, so the buyer get more info when they are interest about the products. It also can let the buyer communicate with the seller when they have question wanted to ask the seller. Furthermore, multi-channel television is under the B2C categories. Multi-channel television is the consumers or the viewers that if they want to watch the channel, they need to subscribe the channel. Through the interface in the television screen, consumers can look for what the channel or the show they are interest. They also can subscribe the channel they are interest or they like. If they wanted to subscribe the channel they want, they can call subscribe by the phone call or suffer the internet to buy and subscribe it. There some other television show, that need to purchase per view. It means the viewer wanted to watch the show they have to pay before they watch it. (Garitaonandia & Garmendia, 2009)

The fourth category in e-commerce is C2B. The consumer is offering a project or idea on the website. So, the companies can review what the consumer offers. After the companies review the project or idea, if the companies want to take the project or buy the idea. They will start biding the price to the consumer. The consumer will choose the bid from the companies send to him. ("Ecommerce definition & types of ecommerce (B2B, B2C, C2B, & C2C)", 2016)

B2C (Business to Consumer)

                After introduce the categories of the e-commerce, now we would like to focus on B2C. According to the survey done by the Pew Research Centre, online shopping is one of the internet activities that growing very fast. We are here to figure out why does it growing so fast. We can know that there several reason that affects the consumer that using the online shopping. One of the reasons is convenience, consumers just need to type the keyword of the product or the companies, then they can easy and quick found what they want. Next reason is wide variety of the products. (Huseynov & Y ld r m, 2015) We can say that most of the item can found at the online shopping website, even the thing small as hair pin until big as houses also can be found at there. There is also having other reason why the online shopping grows in a very fast way, like easy to compare price, discounted price, safe paying the payment and other.

                From another view look at the online shopping, companies have more opportunity to promote and sell their product. Besides that, they can reduce the costs to do the business because when do business on the online shopping web it was free. Doing online business not online can reduce the costs, it also can increase the sales. They can increases the market space and increase the consumers through this way. If the consumers bought the product, the consumers have the question wanted to ask the seller and can find the seller to solve their problem. Furthermore, in the online shopping websites have the product image to show consumers. (John, Khaddaj & Hoppe, 2012) With the image, it can attract the consumers to look at your information. It the companies are selling the cloth, then they can let their consumers have more design to choose.

Conclusion

                Here our conclusion, now the day online shopping becomes very popular. (Daniel, Wilson & Myers, 2002)And it is influencing the buying behaviour of the consumers. Online shopping helped the consumers save a lot of time to purchase or select the item to buy. We guess the online shopping still will function a very long time. And it maybe more people buy stuff from the internet. We would like to say here online shopping still have a very big market to develop.

Bibliography

Alrawi. K, Ekbia. H & Jaber. K (2008). A New Marketing Strategy for E-Commerce: The Gulf Region Experience. Global Business Review, 9(2), 273-286.

Garitaonandia, C., & Garmendia, M. (2009). E-commerce use among digital TV subscribers: audiovisual abundance and virtual purchase -- predictors of e-commerce use among digital television subscribers in Spain. New Media & Society, 11(3), 417-432.

Ecommerce definition & types of ecommerce (B2B, B2C, C2B, & C2C). (2016). Digitsmith.com. Retrieved from http://www.digitsmith.com/ecommerce-definition.html

Huseynov, F., & Y ld r m, S. (2015). Behavioral Issues in B2C E-commerce: The-state-of-the-art. Information Development.

John, B., Khaddaj, S., & Hoppe, A. (2012). Semantic Products Analysis of E-Commerce Websites. Journal Of Algorithms & Computational Technology, 6(3), 447-454.

Daniel, E., Wilson, H., & Myers, A. (2002). Adoption of E-Commerce by SMEs in the UK: Towards a Stage Model. International Small Business Journal, 20(3), 253-270.