e-Business and e-Commerce

preprint for: International Encyclopedia of Human Geography, 2 nd éd. ElsevierThis article presents the fundamentals of e-business and e-commerce and their relations with geography. Electronic platforms and marketplaces provide economies of scale and network effects. E-business gives value chains a high degree of organizational (outsourcing) and locational (offshoring) flexibility, and firms can purchase intermediate goods and business services on a global basis. The rise of e-business shapes the geography of work: tasks that process information are amenable to various forms of teleworking, at home, on travel, or in a coworking space. E-commerce is a subset of e-business, related to trade of goods and services. E-commerce is often defined as business-to-business (B2B), business-to-consumer (B2C), and consumer-to-consumer (C2C). China has surpassed United States as the leading market for both B2B and B2C e-commerce. E-commerce has revolutionized shopping: online merchants benefit from low costs of entry in the business, and consumers have easy access to huge catalogues of products, without regard on their location. But distance still matters: logistics is at the nexus of e-commerce operations. The competition between 'physical' and online retail leads to the rise of multichannel forms of commerce. The foreseeable future of e-business and e-commerce will be shaped by the sophistication of digital technology: advanced algorithmic and artificial intelligence, big data analysis, and the Internet of things