What is E-commerce?
all buying and selling activities carried out through electronic media. Although the facilities include television and telephone, now e-commerce is more often done through the internet.
Because of this understanding, there are misunderstandings about e-commerce and marketplaces. The term e-commerce is used to describe all transactions that use electronic media.
Marketplace itself is one of the e-commerce models, where it functions as an intermediary between sellers and buyers. Sellers who trade on the marketplace only need to serve purchases. All other activities such as website management are taken care of by the platform. Sites like Shopee and Lazada are two examples of marketplaces.
What are the Types of E-commerce?
You may think that online commerce only occurs between sellers and buyers. However, e-commerce is actually divided into six groups, namely
- Business to business (B2B) — The type in which a company sells products or services to other companies. In this e-commerce model, buyers usually order goods in large quantities. An example is a company that purchases office supplies from a manufacturer.
- Business to consumer (B2C) — In this type of e-commerce, a company sells products or services to consumers. In general, customers in B2C e-commerce only retail. If you have ever bought from an online store, this activity falls into this category.
- Consumer to consumer (C2C) — Have you ever sold used goods to other people who need them via the internet? These activities are included in this type of e-commerce. In other words, C2C is an online transaction between two individuals.
- Consumer to business (C2B) — In contrast to B2C, C2B e-commerce is a scenario where someone sells a product or service to a company. A graphic designer, for example, offers and sells his logo to a food business.
- Business to public administration (B2A) — This e-commerce model is similar to B2B, but the actors are businesses and government agencies. An example of B2A is a website creation service for an online administration system.
- Consumer to public administration (C2A) — This type of e-commerce works like C2B. However, transactions are carried out by individuals and government agencies. E-commerce with the C2A model is rarely found in Indonesia. The types of transactions that occur are usually in the form of services.
What are the Benefits of E-commerce?
The development of the e-commerce industry in Indonesia is very fast. With so many online business people, you must be wondering, what are the benefits of e-commerce? Here are some of the advantages that you can get:
- Broad reach — As a conventional store owner, you can only reach shoppers from the same area. It’s different if you have an e-commerce website. Thus, buyers from all over the country can make transactions at your store.
- Not limited by time — Stores in the real world can operate 24 hours a day, but the costs to support them will be enormous. Through the internet, shoppers can still access and buy from stores even if you are fast asleep.
- Lower costs — The operating costs of online stalls are very low compared to building stores. At least, you don’t have to think about employee salaries, building rent, and electricity costs.
- No need to stock yourself — In the ecommerce industry, you can become a dropshipper. This marketing technique allows you to sell without having stock. When the order comes, you just forward it to the manufacturer of the desired item. To understand more about the dropshipping business, you can read this article.
- Ease of managing transactions and shipping — By having an online store, you don’t have to worry about how to transact and ship goods. Now there are various electronic payment services that are carried out via the internet. In addition, consignments can be tracked online.
- You can learn customer habits — Running an online business without understanding customer behavior is a waste of your investment. Currently, there are many analytical tools that can be used to study your online store data, such as Google Analytics.
- Work from anywhere — As previously mentioned, online stores can be accessed anytime. Therefore, you can run it from anywhere as long as you have an adequate device and internet connection.
Want to Sell Online? Don’t Forget to Create a Website
Now you can easily start an ecommerce business. There are at least three tools that can be used to sell online, namely online marketplaces (such as Tokopedia and Bukalapak), their own website, and social media.
Marketplace and social media are certainly the easier way. To get started, you just need to create an account and set up your booth. In fact, there are no operational costs that you need to spend upfront.
However, even if this method is not wrong, having a website that represents your store or business is still important.
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