For most companies in the age of the Internet, electronic commerce is more than just buying and selling products online. Instead, it encompasses the entire online process of developing, marketing, selling, delivering, servicing, and paying for products and services transacted on internetworked, global marketplaces of customers, with the support of a worldwide network of business partners. As we will see in this chapter, electronic commerce systems rely on the resources of the Internet, intranets, extranets, and other technologies to support every step of this process.

Thus, e-commerce is changing how companies do business both internally and externally with their customers, suppliers, and other business partners. How companies apply e-commerce to their business is also subject to change as their managers confront a variety of e-commerce alternatives. The applications of e-commerce by many companies have gone through several major stages as e-commerce matures in the world of business. For example, e-commerce between businesses and consumers (B2C) moved from merely offering multimedia company information at corporate websites (brochureware), to offering products and services at Web storefront sites via electronic catalogs and online sales transactions. B2B e-commerce, on the other hand, started with website support to help business customers serve themselves, and then moved toward automating intranet and extranet procurement systems. But before we go any further, let’s look at a real world example.