Electronic commerce, commonly called (electronic marketing) e-commerce or electronic commerce involves the buying and selling of products or services over electronic systems such as the Internet and other computer networks. The amount of trade conducted electronically has grown dramatically with the use of the Internet. The use of trade is thus encouraging and leveraging the innovations in electronic funds transfer, management of the supply chain, Internet marketing, the online transaction processing, electronic data interchange (EDI) systems inventory management and automatic data collection. Modern electronic commerce typically uses the World Wide Web, at least in some stage of the life cycle of the operation, although it can encompass a wider range of technologies such as email also.
A large percentage of electronic commerce is conducted entirely electronically for virtual items, such as access to premium content on a site, but e-commerce involves the transportation of physical objects in any way. Online retailers are sometimes known as e-tailers and online retail is sometimes known as e-tail. Almost all big retailers have electronic commerce presence on the World Wide Web.
Electronic commerce is conducted between businesses is referred to as Business-to-business or B2B. B2B can be open to all interested parties (eg commodity exchange) or limited to certain pre-qualified participants (private electronic market). Electronic commerce is conducted between businesses and consumers, on the other hand, is called business-to-consumer or B2C. This is the kind of trade made by companies like Amazon.com.
Electronic commerce is generally considered the appearance turnover of e-business. It also includes data exchange to facilitate the financing and payment aspects of business operations.