What is e-commerce?

E-commerce includes electronic money exchange, supply chain management, electronic marketplaces, Internet marketing, online transaction processing, electronic data interchange, inventory management and automated data collection systems. Information technologies utilized in this process include the Internet, extranets, e-mail, databases, electronic catalogs, and cell phones.

E-commerce covers a wide range of areas and can generally be categorized into three main types of business-to-business, business-to-consumer, and consumer-to-consumer models.

The open and global nature of e-commerce creates more trading opportunities for businesses.