The pros and cons of E-Commerce affect three major stakeholders: consumers business organisations, and society.
Advantages:
(i) E-Commerce system is operated on all days and all the day (24x7). People can interact with business at the time of their convenience.
(ii) Speed is a major advantage in E-Commerce. Advanced Electronic communications systems allow messages to reach across the world instantaneously.
(iii) The Internet is too easy to 'shop around' for products and services that may be more cheaper. It provides an opportunity to buy at reduced costs and also to identify original manufacturers.
(iv) The whole world becomes a shop for today's customers. They can have wide choice by comparing and evaluating the same product at different websites.
(v) Customers can shop from home or anywhere at their convenience. They can read the details regarding model numbers, prices, features etc., from websites and also the payments can be made through online.
Disadvantages:
(i) E-Commerce is often used to buy goods that are not available locally but from businesses all over the world. Physical goods needs to be transported, which takes time and costs money. Some E-Commerce companies handle this through shipments.
(ii) Unlike returning goods to a traditional shop returning goods through online is believed to be an area of difficulty.
(iii) Privacy issues are serious in E-Commerce. In E-Commerce generating consumer information is inevitable. Privacy concerns are true in order to make people get cold feet about online shopping.
(iv) Physical product disputes are a major disadvantage in E-Commerce. E-Commerce purchases are often made on trust since we don't have physical access to the product.
(v) Delivery ambiguity. Since supplying businesses can be conducted across the world, it can be uncertain whether they are indeed genuine businesses or just going to take our money.

Traditional Commerce	E-Commerce
Traditional commerce is buying or selling of products and services physically.	E-Commerce carries out commercial transactions electronically on the Internet.
Customer can easily identify, authenticate and talk to the merchant.	Neither customer nor merchant see the other.
Physical stores are not feasible to be open all the times.	It is always available on all time and all days of the year.
Products can be inspected physically before purchase.	Products can't be inspected physically before purchase.
Scope of business is limited to a particular area.	Scope of business is global. Vendors can expand their business worldwide.
Resource focuses Supply side.	Resource focuses Demand side.
Business Relationship is Linear.	Business Relationship is End-to-end.
Marketing is one way marketing	One-to-one marketing.
Payment is made by cash, cheque, cards, etc.	Payment system is mostly credit card and through fund transfer.
Most goods are delivered instantly.	It takes time to transport goods.

(i) Auction website is a kind of website, that auctions items on the Internet and levies some commission from the sales.
e.g. https://www.ebay.com/
(ii) Banner advertisement website displays advertisements of other companies in its websites and thereby earns revenue.
(iii) Bulk-buying website collect a number of users together where every one wants to buy similar items - the site negotiates a discount with the supplier and takes commission. e.g. https://www.alibaba.com/
(iv) Digital publishing sites effectively host the e-books or magazines on the web. They make profits in anumber of wayssuch as advertising, selling etc., https://wordpress.org/
(v) Licensing sites allow other websites to make use of their software. For example, the search engines which allow a visitor of the site to search within the website more easily.
(vi) Name-your-own-price websites are just like normal retail sites. In contrast, the buyer negotiates with the retailer for a particular product or service. https://in.hotels.com/
(vii) Online Shopping mall website allows multi E-Commerce traders to assemble together on a single website. Often these sellers would be related to each other, for example they may all sell luxury goods. This site would take a percentage of their profit.






 

(i) Business to Business (B2B);
(ii) Business to Consumer (B2C);
(iii) Business to Government (B2G);
(iv) Consumer to Business (C2B);
(v) Consumer to Consumer (C2C);
(vi) Consumer to Government (C2G);
(vii) Government to Business (G2B);
(viii) Government to Consumer (G2C);
(ixg) Government to Government (G2G)
Business to Consumer (B2C):
(i) In B2C E-Commerce, commercial transactions take place between business firms and their consumers.
(ii) It is the direct trade between companies and end-consumers via the Internet.
(iii) B2C companies sell goods, information or services to customers through online in a more personalized dynamic environment and is considered as real competitor for a traditional storekeeper.
(iv) An example of B2C transaction is a book company selling books to customers.
Business to Government (B2G):
(i) B2G is a business model that refers to business organizations sells products, services or information to Governments or to its administrations.
(ii) In other words, when a company get paid for its goods, services by the Government through Internet it is called as B2G model.
(iii) e.g. The Government or its administration buys laptops for students.
Consumer to Business (C2B):
(i) C2B can be described as a form of E-Commerce where, the transaction is originated by the consumers.
(ii) The consumers will fix a requirement or specific price for a service or a commodity. C2B model, is also called as reverse auction model.
(iii) Here, customer bid his price for a service or a product. Then E-Commerce business entity will match the requirement of the consumer to the best possible extent.
(iv) These websites generate revenue through affiliate links, sponsored advertisement or even a small commission in every booking. c.g. Name-your-price websites.
Consumer to Consumer (C2C):
(i) C2C in E-Commerce provides opportunity for trading of products or services among consumers who are connected through the Internet.
(ii) Here the websites act as a platform to facilitate the transaction. The electronic tools and Internet infrastructure are employed to support transactions between individuals.
(iii) It means that a consumer would contact a business in search of a suitable customer. Most of the auction websites and matrimonial websites are working on this methodology.
(iv) For example, a consumer who wants to sell his property can post an advertisement on the website (eg:timesclassifieds.com).
 

(i) The figure which shows the evolution of E-Commerce. Dotcom companies of first wave are mostly American companies.
(ii) The First Wave of Electronic Commerce 1995-2003: The Dotcom bubble had attracted huge investments to first wave companies.
(iii) Initially when web was 1.0 and network technology was in its starting stage, the band-width and network security was very low.
(iv) Only EDI and unstructured E-mail remained as a mode of information exchange between business.
(v) The Second Wave of Electronic Commerce 2004-2009: The second wave is the rebirth of E-Commerce after the dotcom burst.
(vi) The rapid development of network technologies and web 2.0 (interactive) offered the consumers more choices of buying. The increased web users nourished E-Commerce business (mostly B2C) during the second wave.
(vii) The second wave is the business wave globally considered wave in many countries with many languages. Language translation and currency conversion were focused here.
(viii) The Third Wave of Electronic Commerce 2010 - Present: This wave is brought on by the mobile technologies. It connects users via mobile devices for real-time and on-demand transactions.
(ix) Not only the information is filtered by time, but also the geographic coordinates are used to screen the specific location-tailored information properly.
(x) The term Web 3.0 summarize the various characteristics of the future Internet which include Artificial Intelligence, Semantic Web, Generic Database etc, ...