• From an online perspective, EC provides the capability of
buying and selling products and information on the Internet and other on-line services.
• e-business
Business models applied to electronic marketing to consumers
• Direct marketing versus indirect marketing
Direct marketing means that manufacturers advertise and distribute their own products to customers via the Internet-base electronic store (or other telemarketing media) without intervention of any intermediaries. On the other hand, indirect marketing means the products are distributed through third-party intermediaries such as emails.
• Consumer-to-business (C2B): This category includes individuals
who sell products or services to organizations, as well as individuals who seek sellers, interact with them, and conclude a transaction.
2. Retailing in E-commerce
• electronic marketing structure
• Electronic marketing can be classified as consumer-oriented (B2C) and
business oriented electronic marketing (B2B).
• If a manufacturer’s site does not have high visibility, just opening a home
page and passively waiting for customers’ access may not contribute greatly to sales. Therefore, it is necessary for companies to heavily advertise their Web sites’ address. Any cost-effective advertisement can be employed for this purpose. One may link the site to famous electronic directories, and most manufacturers need the directory service of intermediaries. These intermediary sites are called electronic shopping malls (or e-mails). We can observe two types of electronic shopping malls: electronic distributors and electronic brokers (e-broker). If the email takes responsibility for order fulfillment, it is an electronic distributor---for example, Amazon and Online JCPenney. In contrast, electronic brokers only help the search process, for example, Internet Mall. The actual order is forwarded to a manufacturer or distributor.
• Intrabusiness (Organizational) EC: This category includes all
internal organizational activities, usually performed on intranets, which involve exchange of goods, services or information. Activities can range from selling corporate products to employees to online training and cost-reduction activities.
• Business-to-consumer (B2C): These are retailing transactions
with individual shoppers. The typical shopper at is a consumer, or customer.
• Consumer-to-consumer (C2C): In this category a consumer
• Nonbusiness EC: An increased number of non-business
institutions such as academic institutions, not-for-profit organizations, religious organizations, social organizations, and government agencies are using various types of EC to reduce their expenses (e.g., improve purchasing) or to improve their operations and customer service.
sells directly to consumers. Examples are individuals selling classified ads and selling residential property, cars, and so on. Advertising personal services on the Internet and selling the knowledge and expertise is another example of C2C. Several auction sites allow individuals to put items up for auctions. Finally, many individuals are using intranets and other organizational internal networks to advertise items for sale or services.
• From a business process perspective, EC is the application of
technology toward the automation of business transactions and work flow.
• From a service perspective, EC is a tool that addresses
• In this book we use the term electronic commerce in its
broadest scope, which is basically equivalent to ebusiness.
The E-commerce Field
• Classification of the EC Field by the Nature of
• From a communications perspective, EC is the delivery of
information, products/ services, or payments over telephone lines, computer networks, or any other electronic means.
• Full cyber marketing versus partial cyber marketing
Full cyber marketing (or pure cyber marketing) means the companies like Amazon sell their products and services only through the Internet, whereas partial cyber marketing means the companies like Barnes & Noble sell not only through the Internet but also through traditional physical stores.
the Transactions
• Business-to-business (B2B): Most of EC today is of this type. It
includes the IOS transactions and electronic market transactions between organizations.