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Electronic business
Electronic business (also known as online business or e-business) is any kind of business or commercial transaction that includes sharing information across the internet. Commerce constitutes the exchange of products and services between businesses, groups, and individuals and can be seen as one of the essential activities of any business. Electronic commerce focuses on the use of information and communication technology to enable the external activities and relationships of the business with individuals, groups, and other businesses, while e-business refers to business with help of the internet. Electronic business differs from electronic commerce as it does not only deal with online transactions of selling and buying of a product and/or service but also enables to conduct of business processes (inbound/outbound logistics, manufacturing & operations, marketing and sales, customer service) within the value chain through internal or external networks. The term "e-business" was coined by IBM's marketing and Internet team in 1996. Electronic business can take place between a very large number of market participants; it can be between business and consumer, private individuals, public administrations, or any other organizations such as NGOs. These various market participants can be divided into three main groups:
- Business (B)
- Consumer (C)
- Administration (A) All of them can be either buyers or service providers within the market. There are nine possible combinations for electronic business relationships. B2C and B2B belong to E-commerce, while A2B and A2A belong to the E-government sector which is also a part of the electronic business. One of the founding pillars of electronic business was the development of the Electronic Data Interchange (EDI) electronic data interchange. This system replaced traditional mailing and faxing of documents with a digital transfer of data from one computer to another, without any human intervention. Michael Aldrich is considered the developer of the predecessor to online shopping.