1. Introduction: Electronic commerce

Electronic commerce or e-commerce consists of the buying, selling, marketing, and servicing of products or services over computer networks. The information technology industry might see it as an electronic business application aimed at commercial transactions.

E-commerce comprises of two channels, B2B commerce and B2C commerce. This ebook will mainly reflect information on B2C commerce which is betteer known as Online Shopping. Hence, the focus of this ebook will be disseminate useful information from the perspective of an Average Joe shopping esclapades on the Internet.

For people who value their time shopping has been more of a fruitful experience rather than spending some bucks on some things we need. And the advent of Interet has just made it much easier. If you ready to spend some time on the World Wide Web you will experinece that shopping isn't just buying products, it's more about enjoying the variety of options at your disposal and choosing the ones which suit your pocket and decorate your home as well.

A sincere effort has been made to comprehensively cover all relevants aspects of shopping in this ebook, which will give a new starting point for beginners as well as experts to know what's all out there in the cyberspace marketplace.

If you want to skip the educational stuff and go right to shopping, just go to Chapter 2.

Retail eCommerce

When most people think of eCommerce, this is what they are referring to- the direct sale of goods and services from business to consumers. Many of the advantages of business to consumer (B2C) eCommerce were first exploited by retail "e-businesses" such as Amazon.com, eTrade, eBay, and Auto-by-tel.  These companies were created as Internet versions of traditional bookstores, brokerage firms, auction houses, and auto dealerships. Freed from the geographic confines and costs of running actual stores, such firms could deliver almost unlimited content on request and could react and make changes in close to real-time.

Compared to traditional retail or catalogue operations, this new way of conducting business is changing cost structures.  The emergence of these types of e-businesses has made their "brick and mortar" competitors consider their own eCommerce strategies, and many are now operating or planning to operate their own online stores. 

It is also leading to a new breed of entrepreneurs who will utilize the Internet to realize their dreams of delivering their products or services directly to the marketplace without high start-up or overhead costs.

Business-to-Business eCommerce

Although retail eCommerce gets most of the attention, the simple fact remains that spending on business-to-business (B2B) eCommerce was more than 500% higher than spending on business-to-consumer eCommerce ($43 billion to $8 billion) in 1998 and is grew to even higher heights into the new millennium.  By 2003, B2B eCommerce soared - with total B2B eCommerce expenditures reaching $1.5 trillion in 2004.