This introduction to e commerce will help you understand the different types of e commerce, as well as its advantages and drawbacks. E commerce is all around us, it has been for years, even long before the Internet. Staring in the 60s, businesses began sharing files and information with each other electronically, the very first form of e commerce. With the Internet, people gained the ability to purchase goods and services from businesses and each other, electronically. All these make up the face of e commerce today.
Business-to-business e commerce is the exchange and transfer of files and money between businesses, and as we’ve mentioned, this began in the 1960s. It took hold in the 80s, though, when one standard was set for electronic transactions that allowed all businesses to connect this way.
Consumer-to-consumer e commerce is when a person goes online and exchanges goods and services with another person. Ebay, for instance, is the original consumer-to-consumer site, with its auctions in which anyone can put up goods for sale to the site’s visitors.
Peer-to-peer e commerce began with Napster offering free music downloads via a file-sharing...