E-commerce is a continuously evolving phenomenon. E-Commerce is the process whereby different types of business activities are being carried out through internet and other related technologies with the involvement of trading parties. Indeed, the division of electronic commerce can be trace to Business to Business (B2B), Business to Consumer (B2C), Consumer to Business (C2B) and Consumer to Consumer (C2C).
C2C transactions generally involve products sold through a classified or auction system. Products sold are often used or second hand. There are minimal costs involved with the lack of retailers and wholesalers, keeping the margins higher for sellers and prices lower for buyers.
There is also the convenience factor — instead of trying to sell items in person at a brick-and-mortar store, consumers can simply list their products online and wait for the buyers to come to them. Buyers don't need to drive around and search through stores for an item they want — they just have to search for it on a C2C site.
C2C e-commerce can also take place in online communities, chat rooms, third-party consumer listing services, and Web-based discussion forums.
Retailers see it as very important, given the growing use of social media channels by consumers to share their option about specific stock, which often drives increased traffic to stores.
The goal of C2C is to enable buyers and sellers to find each other easily. They benefit in two crucial commerce areas. Firstly, they benefit from competition for product and second, they can easily find products that are otherwise difficult to locate.
Compared to B2C commerce, gaining trust is more complicated when the buyer and seller are both individuals, and with Internet come the disadvantages of anonymity - the potential for fraud or misrepresentation is much greater online than in the physical world. Nevertheless, there are ways of alleviating the trust problem and the success of C2C auction systems is seen to owe a great deal to the development of working reputation systems.
E-Commerce: C2C
