You would’ve often come across laymen or even business people who think the terms e-commerce and e-business are synonymous with each other. Could they be more wrong?
Although the differences between them are pretty unnoticeable, they should never be used interchangeably. Yes, never. If you’re one of those folks who’s been using the terms e-commerce and e-business as synonyms, then this post is a must-read for you.
E-commerce is the selling and buying of goods or services over the internet, whereas e-business is the online presence of a business. Let’s get going to understand what it further means and states.
The Meaning Of the Terms: Commerce & Business
Business and commerce are words that seem to uphold a similar meaning, but they differ vastly from one another.
Commerce mainly focuses on the buying and selling aspects of a business, whereas there is much more to a business than just buying and selling. Running a business means you’re taking care of the commerce and planning, advertising, accounting, and all the other nuances of a company.
Any business needs commerce (sales) to survive. But the same business expanding its presence online, as e-business, doesn’t necessarily need e-commerce to survive.
E-Commerce Is A Subset Of E-Business
When you say company “A” is an e-commerce company, you should know that it offers nothing more than just handling the sale and purchase of goods. This somewhat shows that commerce is an activity of just selling and buying online.
But the e-commerce company is an e-business that requires marketing, planning, and other activities that pertain to a traditional offline business.
9 Differences Between E-Commerce vs E-Business
The differences between e-commerce and e-business are micro, and one can go on and on for pages. But we are not gonna do that. Below we have listed out the differences in points so you can skim through them quickly. Here you go:
- E-commerce is an activity, while an e-business is an organization.
- E-business is more of an actual entity; that is, it can be owned by a person. But in the case of commerce, you cannot say, “I own/run an e-commerce”.
- E-business is a superset that may encapsulate several activities such as planning, selling, buying, manufacturing, etc. In contrast, e-commerce, being a subset, is just one of the activities in the entire e-business.
- There exist several types of businesses based on the structure, such as trader, trust, partnership, etc. One cannot say that similar variations exist when it comes to commerce. The various kinds of e-commerce and e-business are provided at the end of this topic.
- Monetary transactions are carried out in e-commerce, but in e-business, it may or may not happen.
- A website is the only element that may be needed to perform e-commerce. But as an e-business, you’ll need a website, Customer Relationship Management (CRM), Enterprise Resource Planning (ERP), etc., to sustain over the internet.
- E-commerce is a bit extroverted in the sense of reaching out to external customers and other businesses. Whereas e-businesses are ambivert – they handle the internal as well as external parties.
- The various activities involved in commerce are online ticketing, customer support, online payment, accounting software, etc. Some of the activities in an e-business would be customer awareness, email marketing, supply-chain management, etc.
- E-commerce uses just the internet, and e-business often uses the internet, intranet, and extranet.
Let’s head over to the various types of e-commerce and e-business.
Types Of E-Commerce
There are four ways in which can be carried out:
- B2B – The sale of goods happens between one business and another business.
- B2C – The sale of goods happens between a business and a customer.
- C2C – The sale of goods happens between one customer and another customer.
- C2B – The sale of goods happens between a customer and a business.
Types Of E-Business
- PurePlay – These businesses have an online presence only. They don’t have physical stores.
- Brick and Click – These are businesses that carry an online presence in addition to physical stores or companies.
The first step in any successful venture would be to observe the minute differences between processes that other people tend to overlook. By understanding the differences between e-commerce vs e-business, you’ve taken your first step towards a successful business journey.
Now that you’ve understood the differences between both terms let’s hear what you have to add to the above list.