Week 2 Project

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Business and E-commerce

E-Commerce

Electronic commerce or e-commerce is the process of buying and selling goods electronically using the web or other digital network technologies. The three major types of e-commerce are:

B2B—Business-to-Business

B2C—Business-to-Consumer

C2C—Consumer-to-Consumer

E-commerce transactions can be classi�ed by the way participants are physically connected to the Internet. E-commerce can be subdivided into two types:

Mobile commerce (m-commerce): The purchase of goods or services using small, wireless, handheld devices such as cell phones or PDAs.

Wired networks: The purchase of goods or services using local area network (LAN), wide area network (WAN), and other optical networks. Conventional e- commerce transactions take place over wired networks.

B2B e-commerce can improve ef�ciency by enabling companies to locate suppliers, solicit bids with requests for proposal (RFP), place orders, and track shipments in transit. Internet marketplaces provide a digital marketplace that represents an industry based on a Web technology for buyers and sellers. Internet marketplaces are also differentiated by whether they sell direct or indirect goods, support long-term or spot purchasing, or serve horizontal or vertical markets.

E-commerce has helped streamline order management processes in the B2C, B2B, and C2C scenarios, particularly allowing disintermediation and Web personalization. For example, before automation Lee Sports’ sales representatives needed to con�gure their orders manually. The item number structure was complex because it used the four basic components of style, color, design, and size. The design symbolized the League, Team, Player logo, or a likeness. The complexity grew not because all designs were not available for all combinations of style and color but due to graphic restrictions and color con�icts. Special negotiated prices were used for speci�c national account customers. As a result many item con�guration errors and pricing errors occurred due to the antiquated paper or Fax or manual data entry process.

After the implementation of sales force automation (SFA), the entire order can be correctly con�gured and validated on the sales representative’s PowerBook with only the valid items and the negotiated prices for a particular customer. This decreased the licensed sportswear-ordering process from many days to a few hours.

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