eBusiness and eBay
This week we had a few discussions on the nature of e-business and the supply chain. A chart illustrating the nature of all transactions between business and consumer was put up and we had a discussion on what specific kinds of transactions and examples of companies who engage in this sort of business.
Interestingly enough, it is very difficult to discern consumer to business (C2B) activities from business to consumer. Keeping the examples limited to online activity turned out to be quite difficult. Evidently, Priceline.com was given as an example of C2B activity. I was somewhat confused by this, I must admit, because even though one is able to name their own price on airline tickets, they are still purchasing these tickets from a business; therefore, it is a B2C activity regardless of how it is priced. More obvious examples of C2B activities are those of selling textbooks to businesses online. eBay-related activities are still not technically considered C2B activities because one must pay eBay for the service. I'd disagree with this statement, because one is not at any time selling any item to the entity eBay itself. eBay is only an intermediary, like the classified ads, by which sellers can find buyers without the use of expensive marketing activities. The small fee owed to eBay for the listing is a nearly insignificant portion of the total sale fee.
I have used eBay myself for making both personal sales and purchases as well as sales and purchases for a company I worked for over the summer. At this company we buy and sell used printing presses, and I was in charge of the eBay portion of the business, which accounted for about 25% of our total sales and purchases. When we bought presses on eBay from private parties and small printing businesses, we paid nothing to eBay; we only obtained the contact information of the seller, picked up the equipment through our own trucks and paid with our own business checks. This could be considered a C2B transaction when we purchased equipment from private parties. Small print shops, compared to the size of our company and the volume of machinery we dealt with, could almost be considered consumers. They are consumers of printing equipment, which we provide.
Comments
Posted by: Michel
Posted on: October 2, 2006 03:06 AM
(1) You need to pick up the pace and give this a boost.
(2) Sharing this corner with your other course is not working out--get another blog.
(3) There are no dates on your posts!