WHAT IS E-COMMERCE?

(Reference: http://www.winfieldcomputers.com/images/ecommerce_diagram.gif )

Electronic commerce (widely known as e-commerce) is the buying and selling of goods and services over electronic means such as the Internet.

E-commerce conducted between two business partners is known as business-to-business (B2B) transactions, while that conducted between business and consumers is known as business-to-consumers (B2C) and consumers-to-consumers (C2C). We'll look at the business model (B2B, B2C, C2C) of Threadless under the features of the website below.

E-commerce is a subset of E-business (electronic business), where it is the part which involves the financial transactions of the business (ie. buying and selling). In the case of Threadless, the company has a website which performs the e-commerce activities of the company; which allows users to buy shirts via electronic means (example, the Internet) and allows the company to sell the shirts to customers the same way.

E-commerce is becoming a popular option for many users as it offers many advantages to them such as saving time by shopping within the comfort of their own homes, getting to places within a click of the mouse, and able to spend without the worry of security leak over personal information (due to fraud detection and reporting during the process of payment). However, one of the disadvantages to a company conducting e-commerce over websites may be increased competition from similar industry's competing companies due to readily available information (for example, pricing information can easily be found on the website).

(References: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Electronic_commerce)