What is e-commerce? Simply put, it is e-commerce and online shopping, but e-commerce is definitely not just opening a Taobao store or making a Taobao. When most companies just started doing e-commerce, their understanding of e-commerce was only a preliminary concept: companies directly connect with consumers, eliminate the price difference of middlemen, and earn more profits. Then they recruit programmers and start their own e-commerce journey.

It's beautiful to imagine, but the reality will not be so smooth, and it is likely to fall very painfully!

E-commerce is actually a very broad concept. It is like a net, and the program is just a tiny bit of mesh in this net.

Before talking about e-commerce in detail, let's first understand what business is. The core of business is the enterprise, peer enterprises constitute the industry, and related industries constitute the industry. This is also a business process, which can be explained by value chain, supply chain, and industrial chain.

The value chain is the value created by the enterprise for the customer, which can be simply described as: product design-raw material procurement-factory production-warehouse storage-logistics and transportation-marketing and promotion-intermediate sales-consumer purchase. The sales process in the middle has derived many roles, such as dealers, distributors, channel merchants, retailers, etc., and such a simple chain has expanded into a complex "small network".

The supply chain is to combine the relevant roles into a reasonable network structure according to a reasonable process during the production and circulation of products. For example: raw material suppliers, manufacturers, distributors, retailers and final consumers. The supply chain is like a large team network, which expands from one enterprise to multiple enterprises, and combines multiple enterprises into a larger collaborative network.

What is the industrial chain? The industrial chain is more macroscopic, belonging to the structure of a cluster of enterprises, but the industrial dimension has basically exceeded the scope of most small and medium-sized enterprises.

Understanding the physical business process makes it easier to understand the business model and product positioning of e-commerce products. The common types of e-commerce are B2C, B2B, B2B2C, C2C, O2O, new retail, C2M, C2B. If you consider the special customs clearance of cross-border trade, cross-border e-commerce is actually a major category. To put it simply, today's e-commerce models are generally divided into: business-to-business, business-to-user, business-to-business-to-user, user-to-business, etc. Different e-commerce models are selected according to the company's positioning and users.

If you are doing e-commerce now, do you think it is better to do Taobao or Taobao? First of all, you must understand your positioning and what position you want to put your company in. If you just want to be a B2C and want to deliver goods directly to users, then the most sensible way is to open a Taobao store, which is a fast and safe e-commerce idea.