Catergories of E-Commerce

Good afternoon,

Like I have mentioned before, e-commerce is often thought be transactions between us, consumers, and businesses as we purchased items through the Internet. This would be an example of business-to-consumer (B2C). There are a few other categories and they are not limited to the exchange of goods, they also can include services.

Business-to-business (B2B)- Walmart uses B2B with suppliers such as Proctor and Gamble. This means that the suppliers sell all products electronically to Walmart.

Consumer-to-consumer (C2C)- The most relevant example that we use in our area is Kijiji. We are consumers who can then advertise products we would like to sell to other consumers. eBay and Craigslist are other common site that can be used to C2C transactions.

Consumer-to-business (C2B)- This category usually includes consumers providing services to businesses rather than products. My MIS textbook give the example of a consumer creating surveys for a company.

The government also uses e-commerce systems for providing services and citizens (tax filing and payments), businesses (license applications and renewals), employees (e-training) and government (disaster assistance and crisis response).


See, all levels of society are using e-commerce in hundreds of different ways!