Literature Review- Defining eBusiness and eCommerce

One of the difficulties with research in this area has to do with definitions.

Various terminologies that seem to approximate each other have emerged in this field.  For instance, e-commerce (or electronic commerce), online commerce, e-business, online business,  e-marketing , Internet marketing, digital marketing, Web marketing, and online marketing.  

The field has not matured to an extent where there is no clear agreement about the various definitions and terms, so it is quite common to see terms like e-business and e-commerce being used interchangeably.

For the purpose of this project, the following definitions will be used:

eCommerce:

The process of buying, selling transferring, or exchanging products, services, and/or information via computer networks, including the Internet.

Source: Turban et. al. (2006)

Simply put, eCommerce means buying and selling over the Internet.

This definition shall encompass the following perspectives:

Communications - ECommerce is the delivery of goods, services, information, or payments over computer networks or by any other electronic means.

Commercial (trading) - ECommerce provides the capability of buying and selling products, services and information on the Internet and via other online services.

Business Process - ECommerce is doing business electronically by completing business processes over electronic networks, thereby substituting information for physical business processes (Weill and Vitale 2001, pg 13)

Service - ECommerce is a tool that addresses the desire of governments, firms, consumers, and management to cut service costs while improving the quality of customer service and increasing the speed of service delivery.

Learning - ECommerce is an enabler of online teaching and education in schools, universities, and other organisations, including businesses.

Collaboration - ECommerce is the framework for inter-organisational and intra-organisational collaboration.

Community - ECommerce provides a gathering place for community members to learn, transact and collaborate.

eBusiness: 

eBusiness is the transformation of key business processes through the use of Internet technologies.

Source: www.ibm.com/e-business  (since moved)

IBM was one of the first organizations to use the term in 1997 to describe its services, and this definition is broad enough to encompass the various sub-components of an organization that practices e-business.

Dave Chaffey's efforts to distinguish between the two terms can be found here.

Basically, the differences in these terms can be made in terms of their scope.  

eCommerce is essentially buying and selling online, and it includes the buy-side eCommerce which interfaces with organizational suppliers, as well as sell-side eCommerce which are the organization's customers and end users.

eBusiness is a broader concept that encompasses eCommerce.  It also covers organizational processes and functional units.

Chaffey's diagram below illustrates this perfectly and should dispel any confusion as to how these terms apply.




Blogshops are therefore a type of e-business organization because they operate on the Internet and have processes that are Web dependent.  

They are also a type of e-commerce entity because their primary activity is online selling and buying.  In this regards, they are an e-retailer or e-tailer (online retailer) as their interface is usually with end-users.

So, the hierarchial scheme should look like this:

References:

Chaffey, D., Ellis-Chadwick, F., Johnston, K., and Mayer,R. (2006). Internet Marketing, Strategy, Implementation and Practice. Prentice Hall, Third Edition, Essex, England.

Turban, E, King, D., Lee, J.K. and Viehland, D. (2006). Electronic Commerce 2006: A Managerial Perspective, Pearson Prentice Hall, 2006 edition, New Jersey.

Weill, P. and Vitale, M.R. (2001). Place to Space: Migrating to eBusiness Models. Boston: Harvard Business School Press 2001.