E-business

The e-business ( E-trade , in English) indicates well the exchange of S and service S between two entities on the data-processing networks, in particular Internet. It represents a market of more than 16 billion euros Sales turnover only in France.

One can distinguish:

  • the electronic exchange between companies, often called B2B ( Bi-tou-Bi decides), English acronym of Business to business

  • e-business bound for the private individuals, or B2C ( Bi-tou-Ci decides), English acronym of Business to consume. It is about commercial sites Web , standard armchair shopping.
  • e-business between private individuals, or C2C ( Ci-tou-Ci decides), English acronym Consume-to-to consume. They are sites Web allowing the sale between private individuals.
  • the electronic exchange between a company and its employees, often called Intranet or B2E ( Bi-tou-I decides), English acronym of Business to employed
  • the electronic exchange between the private companies and the government, often called B2G ( Bi-tou-dgi decides), English acronym of Business to government

Remote sale

When a good is sold within the framework of the e-business, it is also about remote Vente, and the laws which prevail there apply.

In France, the laws differ according to whether they are goods or services which are bought on line:

  • at the time of the purchase of a manufactured good, the purchaser has time for consideration 7 days (wrought) to turn over its order,
  • at the time of the purchase of a service (a voyage or a plane ticket) the purchaser does not have this time in order to retract.

Among the principal goods and services sold by Internet to private individuals (B2C), one can quote:

  • cultural goods: books, CD and DVD,…
  • technological apparatuses: PC, electronics, hi-fi,…
  • the Tourism and voyages: train tickets, plane, hiring,…
  • products of great consumption with the Supermarket S in line
  • products of printing works: Calling cards, plates, supports commercial
  • products of Habitats, Clothing, Child welfare…

As well as systems of sale especially adapted to world Internet::

  • numerical development of Photography S
  • Remote loading of Music
  • Auction between private individuals Ebay
  • Hiring of DVD by Internet

Lastly, of many companies services on Internet, paying propose or not:

In order to be able to sell on Internet, of the solutions exist on Internet:

Combined sales

In the world of the e-business, the expression click and mortar (or Brigs and clicks ) refers to companies which propose in a complementary way:

  • of the sale by Internet ( activities in line )
  • and of the physical sales outlet or sale ex depot (traditional distribution).
These English expressions are built by analogy with the usual expression Brick and mortar ( of bricks and the mortar ).
One could thus translate this expression into French by: click and store or Internet and store . FNAC is an example classique.
These models of distribution click and mortar are opposed to models “very virtual” where only the online business is proposed to the customers. Certain operators “very virtual” seem to reorientate part of their strategy of distribution towards click and mortar .

Multichannel sales

To develop a strategy multichannel, makes it possible to associate the physical Internet, digital television, mobile services and stores. The interest of such a device is to exploit the growing number of consumers who use for their purchase, of multiple interactive channels of distribution.

Transborder e-business

At the time of the Universalization, Internet became a formidable vector of the e-business. However, the relative questions with the product purchase abroad reveal difficulties, in particular in the event of Litige.

The countries Européen S must for their part transcribe in their national legislations the Directive S concerning this field, which will make homogeneous the applicable rule S between each country of the European Union.

Within the framework of the B2C and when a Achat takes place apart from the European Union, it is advisable to be careful, to know with which one makes Affaire, and to know the conditions of sale well. In the event of serious Litigation, the only recourse could be the deposit of a complaint and in the country of the purchaser, and the country of the salesman. The French Droit protects the Consommateur S by indicating that a purchaser could not be private of his right to deposit Plainte in his home country.

It seems that it is better also to have notions of the right of the country in which the salesman is located.

When it is about B2B , the Droit of consumption leaves rather the place to the Droit of the international business.

When a produced is bought abroad, the Customs duties and the VAT (or its equivalent) are to be discharged, as if the product were bought on the national ground.

In practice:

  • for all the purchases carried out inside the European Union, it does not have there customs duties and the VAT which bracket is that of the country of purchase of the product. It can thus be interesting to buy in the European countries whose VAT is weaker (for example, that of the Germany is of 15%).
  • for all the purchases carried out apart from the European Union, the Customs duties and VAT is to be discharged at the entry on the territory. As the purchaser is generally not present at the moment when the order places the border (generally it is about an airport), the postal services are sworn in to box these taxes. In general these taxes are applied in the form of fixed price or a total way (cost of the product + port for example) what can increase of much the final cost of the purchase. The privately held companies are organized better for this work than the traditional postal services.
The electronic products are often stopped and taxed at the borders. Only the books, which profit from a very weak VAT and customs duties, are never blocked by the postal services because the cost of covering would be higher than the taxes themselves.

Mission e-business

As from October 1997, Francis Lorentz carried out a mission on the e-business for the French government.

Measurements for the development of the e-business were presented by Dominique Strauss-Kahn on May 6th 1998.

See: Measurements for the development of the e-business

The the European Parliament and the Council adopted on June 8th 2000 a European directive on the ecommerce (Directive 2000/31/CE of the European Parliament and the Council relative to certain legal aspects of the services of the company of information, and in particular of the e-business, in the interior market).

Technical specifications

Technical specifications were adopted for the e-business, with EbXML, abbreviation of English Electronic Business using extensible Markup Language. These specifications rest on the Langage of beaconing XML. This standard is published by the OASIS.

EbXML became an international technical specification (ISO/TS 15000) in 2004. UNO supports ebXML with the organization UN/CEFACT, which imposed this specification on the European Union.

Legal safety and aspects

The e-business induces a whole of questions on the data-processing Interopérabilité, between the Computing systems of the customer S and the Fournisseur S, as of the financial institutions which intervene in the payments.

Data-processing interworking rests more and more on the use of Métadonnée S in the majority of the data-processing components (language XML, databases, integrated Business packages, decisional data processing and hypercubes OLAP,…)

See too

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