Ecommerce

Electronic commerce, commonly known as e-commerce or eCommerce, consists of the buying and selling of products or services over electronic systems such as the Internet and other computer networks. The amount of trade conducted electronically has grown extraordinarily since the spread of the Internet. A wide variety of commerce is conducted in this way, spurring and drawing on innovations in electronic funds transfer, supply chain management, Internet marketing, online transaction processing, electronic data interchange (EDI), inventory management systems, and automated data collection systems. Modern electronic commerce typically uses the World Wide Web at least at some point in the transaction's lifecycle, although it can encompass a wider range of technologies such as e-mail as well.

A large percentage of electronic commerce is conducted entirely electronically for virtual items such as access to premium content on a website, but most electronic commerce involves the transportation of physical items in some way. Online retailers are sometimes known as e-tailers and online retail is sometimes known as e-tail. Almost all big retailers have electronic commerce presence on the World Wide Web.

Electronic commerce that is conducted between businesses is referred to as Business-to-business or B2B. B2B can be open to all interested parties (e.g. commodity exchange) or limited to specific, pre-qualified participants (private electronic market).

Electronic commerce is generally considered to be the sales aspect of e-business. It also consists of the exchange of data to facilitate the financing and payment aspects of the business transactions.

Social commerce is a subset of Electronic commerce in which the active participation of customers and their personal relationships are at the forefront. The main element is the involvement of a customer in the marketing of products being sold. e.g. recommendations and comments from customers. This happens for example when customers publish weblogs with their shopping lists. The term was first introduced by David Beisel and then picked up on by Steve Rubel and originally referred primarily to sites such as Yahoo!'s shoposphere, and Shopit, where the social component is primarily recommendation and review.

However, the term has been expanded to include a variety of collaborative commerce activities, where the social participation may extend beyond recommendation to collaborative purchasing, such as BountyUp, or fundraising (ChipIn, Crowdfunder, Causes on Facebook).

Social commerce, like social shopping and online social networks such as Facebook, is a Web 2.0 business application.

Social commerce can be correlated with Search Engine Optimization as a way to build inbound links and generate user content, all of which are tools to improve a website's search results on a given search engine such as Google.

Academic research on social commerce, focusing on the social networking aspects in online marketplaces and the value implications of this business model for companies running social commerce marketplaces and for individuals participating in these marketplaces, has been conducted by researchers at Columbia University's Graduate School of Business. This research defines social commerce as networks of sellers/shops in online marketplaces, whereas social shopping involves networks of buyers/customers in online marketplaces and online communities.