E-commerce is the business process such as buying and selling between the parties (buyer and seller) on the transfer of the right to use the goods or services over the internet networks with certain electronic mechanism. The electronic approval between the seller and the buyer to hold the sale or purchase is the essential element in defining the concept of E-commerce. [2] There are types of E-commerce are Business-to-Business (B2B), Business-to-Consumer (B2C), Consumer-to-Consumer (C2C), Peer-to-Peer (P2P) and Mobile commerce (M-commerce).
Business-to-Business (B2B): focus on selling to other businesses, an E-commerce company can deal with suppliers or distributors or agents, these transactions usually carried out through Electronic Data Interchange (EDI).
Business-to-Consumer (B2C): online businesses attempt to reach individual consumers. Portals (Yahoo.com, MSN.com) offer users useful Web search tools and many services by charging advertisers for add placement, collecting referral fees for steering customers to other sites and charging for premium service portals can generate massive revenue. Besides that, content providers are a part of B2C business models. Content providers make money by charging subscription fees in distributing information content, such as digital news, also provides music, photos, video and artwork over the Web. This type has been used in the practical part of the proposed system.
Consumer-to-Consumer (C2C): provides a way for consumers to sell to each other, with the help of an online market maker and promotes the opportunity for consumers to transact goods or services to other consumers. The rules of this community to compete are operated by the customer itself, check and decide his own basic transaction prices. In C2C, the consumer depends on the market maker to provide a catalogue and search engine.
Peer-to-Peer (P2P): enables Internet users to share files and computer resources directly without having to go through a central Web server.
Mobile Commerce (M-commerce): refers to the use of wireless digital devices to enable transactions on the Web. Many types of transaction can be conducted by mobile consumers, including stock (trade, price comparisons, banking), which enabled by Computer-mediated networks.
Advantages and Disadvantages Of E-Commerce
Advantages of an E-Commerce System
Buying 24/7: everyone can sell and buy any time, night or day, 365 days a year.
Decrease Transaction Costs: the buy and sell from online store, can cut many unnecessary costs.
Conduct a Business Easily: we do not need to physically involve in company or crowds. We can buy from our house comfortable and easily choose goods from various electronically procedures without moving around physically.
Comparison in Prices: Everyone can easily compare fees among the various web sites and usually earn discounts on fees when compared with normal shop fees.
Disadvantages of an E-Commerce System
Security: Everyone good or bad can easily open a web site, and there are many bad sites, which their aim is user’s money.
Guarantee: there is no guarantee for product quality, orders might be damage in the post or things may look different online to what you actually receive.
Social Relationships: E-commerce allows users buying and selling goods without geographic limitations but no social contacts with other persons.
Impact: E- commerce and electronic business have impact on many districts of business for instance, economics, marketing, business law and ethics.
Marketing: The raise of information technologies and computer networks has many effects in business especially in field of marketing. In this case, they can decrease cost of operations and catch new markets for selling and transactions.
E-Commerce Challenges
Infrastructure requirements & Cost: E-commerce systems require new technologies that can touch many of a company’s core business processes, therefore significant investments in hardware, software, staffing, and training is required.
Value: Businesses companies want to know that their investments in E-commerce systems will produce a return.
Diversity of providers: The delivery of services is carried out by a large number of providers, some of which are charitable or nonprofit organizations, others are commercially established.
Security: A company’s assets must be protected against misuse, whether accidental or malicious but that protection should not compromise a site’s usability or performance nor make its development too complex.
Existing Systems: Companies need to be able to harness the functionality of existing applications into Ecommerce systems therefore Internet E-commerce systems integrate existing systems in a manner that avoids duplicate function and maintains usability, performance, and reliability.
Interoperability: The linking of trading partners’ applications in order to exchange business documents and must work together well in order to achieve business objectives. Interoperation between businesses reduces costs and improves performance and enables the implementation of more dynamic value chains.
Multiple relationships among providers: The Department purchases services on behalf of consumers from many provider organizations but the agency from which services are purchased is not necessarily the agency which provides the services.
Governmental and political complexity: The provider field is not the only one characterized by only diverse stakeholders and complex arrangements. The Government sector itself is divided along many lines.
Security Obstacle
In E-Commerce system security hardware, software, and environment are the main critical and vulnerable points. Hardware security includes any devices used in running the E-Commerce website like network devices, web servers, database servers and client’s computer. Securing the network with a properly configured firewall device that is only allowing ports needed for accessing the E-Commerce website which is an essential part of network security. The web server and database server should be isolated from other networks using a network DMZ (demilitarized zone) to reduce possible intrusion from compromised computers on other networks behind the firewall. A DMZ is a separate network added between a protected network and an external network, in order to provide an additional layer of security. Software and routinely released patches should be regularly updated to fix holes in security. Website pages, where confidential information is being entered, should be secured with strong cryptography algorithm [10].The secure an E-Commerce website is a dynamic process where new threats crop-up every day. To build a secure E-commerce application, the following five security features must be included.
Authentication: to establish proof of identities and ensures that the origin of an electronic message or document is correctly identified.
Integrity: message should not be tempered in transit.
Non repudiation: non repudiation does not allow the sender of a message to refute the claim of not sending that message.
Access control: determines who should be able to access what.
Availability: resource should be available to authorized parties at all times.
E-commerce is the business process such as buying and selling between the parties (buyer and seller) on the transfer of the right to use the goods or services over the internet networks with certain electronic mechanism. The electronic approval between the seller and the buyer to hold the sale or purchase is the essential element in defining the concept of E-commerce. [2] There are types of E-commerce are Business-to-Business (B2B), Business-to-Consumer (B2C), Consumer-to-Consumer (C2C), Peer-to-Peer (P2P) and Mobile commerce (M-commerce).
Advantages and Disadvantages Of E-Commerce
Advantages of an E-Commerce System
Disadvantages of an E-Commerce System
E-Commerce Challenges
Security Obstacle
In E-Commerce system security hardware, software, and environment are the main critical and vulnerable points. Hardware security includes any devices used in running the E-Commerce website like network devices, web servers, database servers and client’s computer. Securing the network with a properly configured firewall device that is only allowing ports needed for accessing the E-Commerce website which is an essential part of network security. The web server and database server should be isolated from other networks using a network DMZ (demilitarized zone) to reduce possible intrusion from compromised computers on other networks behind the firewall. A DMZ is a separate network added between a protected network and an external network, in order to provide an additional layer of security. Software and routinely released patches should be regularly updated to fix holes in security. Website pages, where confidential information is being entered, should be secured with strong cryptography algorithm [10].The secure an E-Commerce website is a dynamic process where new threats crop-up every day. To build a secure E-commerce application, the following five security features must be included.
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