Ecommerce, short for electronic commerce, refers to the buying and selling of goods or services using the internet and the transfer of money and data to execute these transactions. Ecommerce is often used to refer to the sale of physical products online, but it can also describe any kind of commercial transaction that is facilitated through the internet.
Types of Ecommerce
There are four main types of ecommerce models that can describe almost every transaction that takes place between consumers and businesses.
- B2C (Business-to-Consumer): This is the most common model where businesses sell to consumers.
- B2B (Business-to-Business): In this model, a business sells to another business. This often occurs in the form of wholesale transactions.
- C2C (Consumer-to-Consumer): One consumer sells a product or service to another consumer, often through a third party site which facilitates the transaction.
- C2B (Consumer-to-Business): In this model, consumers offer products or services to companies.