What are the most common types of Ecommerce business models?

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The four main types of business models which evolve around ecommerce are.

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1. Business to Consumer (B2C):
A business sells goods or service to a consumer

(For example. You buy a pair of sunglasses from an online store, such as Amazon or other smaller sunglasses retailers).

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2. Business to Business (B2B):
A business sells goods or service to another business (For example. A business sells large bulk quantities of sunglasses, at a heavily discounted price, to a large established retailer, say a street fashion outlet. They then sell those to consumers)  

3. Consumer to Consumer (C2C):
When a person sells their personal goods or a service they can offer, to another consumer (e.g. You sell your bike on eBay to another person, you give someone a haircut at their house because you are a trained hairdresser or barber, that person then pays you for that service).

4. Consumer to Business (C2B):
When a person can sell their own products or services to a business or organization (e.g. A singer offers to sing at a hall or local entertainment venue, the singer attracts an audience for the hall owner in exchange for a fee, a photographer takes photos of a business for them to use on their website, the person charges the business a set fee for a number of photos which they can choose from those he has taken).

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Examples of Ecommerce

Ecommerce can involve various different payment methods and transactions between the bsuiness and the consumer, the buyer

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1. Retail:
A customer enters a store, chooses the items they wish to buy and then purchase those items, the sale has usually taken place without the need for the business to interact with the customer at all, the customer just chooses what they want, goes to the payment counter, buys and leave the retail store.

2. Wholesale:
A Wholesaler generally has a large warehouse or storage facility, customers then go to the wholesaler and buy items in large quantities, bulk purchases, so the customer buys them at a discount. Often retailers are the customers, they use wholesale to buy the products in bulk, at a lower price, they then put those products in their stores and the general customer, the public, go to their stores and then buy the products from the retailer.

3. Dropshipping:
This is where a customer buys a product from a store but does not leave the store with the product they have purchased, the product is usually purchased from a manufacturer and the manufacturer then ships the product directly to the person who purchased it. This is one of the methods we cover in detail in the dropshipping section of this site.

5. Membership/Subscription:
The automatic and recurring purchase of a product or service, such as a gym membership, this is paid by the person/customer to use the gym on a regular basis, until the person chooses to cancel their membership/subscription to the gym.

6. Physical products:
Are any products that require to be stocked and physically handed to the customer/the buyer or shipped to the customer when the product has been sold to them.

7. Digital products:
Are products which may be downloadable, for example, software or an app that is downloaded to a computer or a phone/tablet. The customer first buys the item and then has the rights to use that item as they have purchased and maybe paid for a licence to use those products.

8. Services:
A skilled person with a set of skills/ possibly with qualifications will provide their services for a set fee/price. The person who provides the service and gives their time to provide their service, charges an agreed fee, this could be anything from a haircut to a gardener who comes and does your garden a few hours every week.