Digital Marketplace as a New Frontier of Electronic Commerce

Literature Review

Electronic business, as stated by Sukumar and Edgar (2009), is a phenomenon of buying and selling through an online platform that is becoming more broadly accepted. E-business has recently been forecasted to reach an indeed high amount, i.e. 1,115 billion dollars in sales relating to goods and services (Chaffey, 2016). The Internet and the massive adoption of the smartphone have become an enabler of online transactions. This is further augmented by the fact that billions of people are now able to buy or sell items online, at any time and from anywhere (Eugine Franco and Bulomine Regi, 2016; Mulyani et al., 2019).

E-business is the use of the Internet to network and empower business processes, electronic commerce, organizational communication and collaboration within a company and with its customers, suppliers, and other stakeholders (Combe, 2006, p. 1). In simpler terms, it is another way of conducting business, which is with the use of the Internet (or other electronic networks) through electronic devices (Mohan, 2015). While, e-commerce, on the other hand, is similarly using the Internet, only it is in the purchasing and selling of goods and services, whether as transactions of Business-to-Business (B2B), Business-to-Consumer (B2C), Consumer-to-Consumer (C2C) or Consumer-to-Business (C2B) (Rouse, n.d.). Because e-business often also includes e-commerce, these two terms are frequently interchangeable synonymously (Anshari & Lim, 2018).