Characteristics of e-commerce

E-commerce, referred to as e-commerce, refers to trading activities and related service activities on the Internet (Internet), intranet (Intranet) and value-added network (VAN, Value Added Network) in the form of electronic transactions, so as to make the traditional commercial activities of the various aspects of the electronic, networked. E-commerce includes electronic money exchange, supply chain management, electronic marketplace, network marketing, online transaction processing, electronic data interchange (EDI), inventory management and automatic data collection system. Information technologies utilized in this process include the Internet, extranets, e-mail, databases, electronic catalogs, and mobile telephones.

E-commerce covers a wide range of areas and can generally be categorized into three main types of business-to-business (B2B / Business-to-Business), business-to-consumer (B2C / Business-to-Consumer), and consumer-to-consumer (C2C / Consumer-to-Consumer) models.

In addition there are C2B (Consumer-to-Business, Consumer-to-Business), B2M (Business-to-Marketing, Business-to-Marketing), M2C (Manufacturers-to-Consumer, Manufacturers-to-Consumer), B2A or B2G ( Business-to-Administration, Business-to-Administration), C2A or C2G (Consumer-to-Administration, Consumer-to-Administration), O2O (Online To Offline) and many other e-commerce models.

With the increase in the number of Internet users in China, the use of the Internet for online shopping and payment by bank card has become increasingly popular, and the market share is growing rapidly, with a variety of types of e-commerce sites emerging.