E- Commerce Essay Example | Topics and Well Written Essays - 2000 words

E- Commerce - Essay Example Many people call this as the knowledge revolution, characterized by an international data highway that works 24 hours a day, seven days a week. It has been far too long since people have acknowledged that the wired or networked world is revolutionizing business. This phenomenon has paved the way for organizations to better communicate with their market and all the stakeholders involved in the production and selling of goods and services. In a nutshell, companies use technology and electronic mediation not just to reach out to its consumers and suppliers but also to automate back-office tasks and industrial operations while pushing ahead with research and development. eCommerce eCommerce or eBusiness is the most prominent consequence of electronic mediation in business. Here, individuals and organizations can sell and/or purchase goods and services through the Internet. The standard definition for eCommerce has been put forward by the US Census Bureau , which defined eCommerce as â₠¬Å"any transaction completed over a computer-mediated network that involves the transfer of ownership or rights to use goods or services.† (Storz 2007, p. 126) The Internet, however, is not the only channel by which eCommerce can operate. For instance, transactions can be made through different communication and technological channels such as the phone. Nonetheless, the Internet dominates the electronic commerce today. It was created thanks to the personal computer (PC), telecommunications, business software, as well as the advances in office technology industries. (Shi, p. 25) What ecommerce did for companies is to tear down the traditional bricks and mortar business models and imposing its own brand that features increased performance, speed and cost efficiency. In addition, according to Kellerman (2002), â€Å"globalization is quite unique to eCommerce, permitting the creation of global market areas for many products and services,† and that its â€Å"attribute is â €Å"intelligence, whereby eCommerce is aided by sophisticated information tool, such as databases, search engine and the like.† (p. 128) There are fundamentally two classifications by which eCommerce operates: B2B eCommerce and B2C eCommerce. The transactions that are electronically mediated between enterprises are called business-to-business (B2B) eCommerce, while electronically selling goods and services by a company to its consumers is called as business-to-consumer (B2C) eCommerce. Together they manifest the best possible benefits that a company could reap out of communication and technology. Business to Business With regards to the organization, electronic mediation poses several benefits and opportunities. The most important of these is cost efficiency, productivity and convenience. In the past, for instance, a company would follow the traditional method of procurement, which entails numerous work and human resource in order for products to be bought and sent to the buy er. The consumer would order through a thick and burdensome catalog and would be punished by having to browse each and every page that could rival the number of pages of the telephone directory. After, making the selection, he would then have to phone the selling party, be given several forms to fill, fax his information and proceed with the buy and sell process. This setup can be extremely be aggravated when products and serv