What is the electronic marketplace?
Electronic
markets ordinarily refer to online trading and auctions, such as online stock
trading markets, online auctions for computers and other goods. The electronic
marketplace refers to the emerging market economy where producers,
intermediaries and consumers interact electronically or digitally in some way.
The electronic marketplace is a virtual representative of physical markets. The
economic activities undertaken by this electronic marketplace collectively
represent the digital economy. Electronic business, broadly defined, is
concerned with the electronic marketplace.
The electronic marketplace resembles
physical markets (the one we know) in many aspects. As in physical markets,
components of the digital economy include:
-
players (market
agents such as firms, suppliers, brokers, shops and consumers)
-
products (goods
and services;) and
-
processes
(supply, production, marketing, competition, distribution, consumption, etc.).
The difference is that, in the
electronic marketplace, at least some of these components are electronic,
digital, virtual or online (whichever term you may prefer). For example, a
digital player is someone with an email or a Web page. Purely "physical" sellers
may be selling a digital product, e.g. digital CD-ROM. One that sells physical
products at a physical store may offer product information online (thereby
allowing consumers to "search online"), while production, ordering, payment and
delivery are done conventionally. Currently, the emphasis is on the core of the
electronic marketplace where everything (i.e. all value chains or business
activities) is online. But, if any aspect of your business or consumption dwells
upon the digital process, you are already part of the electronic marketplace.
That is, almost all of us are already players in the electronic marketplace
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