Electronic commerce, commonly known as e-commerce or eCommerce, consists of the buying and selling of products or services using electronic systems (primarily the Internet). The amount of trade conducted electronically has grown rapidly with widespread Internet usage. Commerce conducted in this way, has been encouraging and drawing on innovations in electronic funds transfer, supply chain management, online marketing, transaction processing, electronic data interchange (EDI), inventory management systems and automated data collection systems. Modern electronic commerce typically uses the World Wide Web at some point in the transaction’s lifecycle, although it can encompass a wider range of technologies such as e-mail.
A large percentage of electronic commerce is conducted entirely electronically (especially 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 now have an ecommerce presence on the World Wide Web.
E-commerce
