People oftentimes use e-commerce and online shopping as synonyms. Unfortunately, e-commerce and online shopping are not the same things. Understanding the distinction between e-commerce vs online shopping is important for bloggers, writers, journalists, and entrepreneurs who might often get these two confused. Why does this happen? A lot of the internet (as well as textbooks and handbooks) contain the incorrect use of either term. When they’re quoted somewhere, the secondary source just confuses the terms even more.
E-Commerce vs Online Shopping
Here’s what you should know about e-commerce, online shopping, and why they are not the same thing.
What’s E-Commerce Worth?
E-commerce as a whole is estimated to have been worth at least 3.53 trillion USD in 2019. This makes it one of the largest industries in the world. Moreover, one that’s close to outranking brick-and-mortar store sales. How much will e-commerce be worth next? We’ll only know in time, but it’s estimated that its value could more than double with enough investment.
Different Types Of E-Commerce
If you want to understand the difference between e-commerce and online shopping, let’s start with the different types of e-commerce first. It can be split up into different channels that include business-to-consumer (B2C), business-to-business (B2B), or C2B – and you can guess what that stands for. To clarify, e-commerce is a broadly defined industry. Online shopping is considered to be part of e-commerce, but not all e-commerce is just about online shopping.
What’s Online Shopping?
Online shopping has a much simpler definition than e-commerce. It means going online and buying something. When people talk about online retail shopping, think of websites like Amazon. When people talk about e-commerce, think of everything else websites like Amazon also does. For example, their delivery methods, their websites, their e-books, their warehouses, their staff. All of that plus online shopping equals e-commerce.
Why It Matters
The differences between online shopping and e-commerce are especially important to understand when you are a business owner. When your business is in the online space or you would like to bring an e-commerce platform to what you’re now doing, thinking only about online shopping can limit your ability to grow. If you see your e-commerce business only as an online shopping venture, how many possible opportunities are you missing? Most importantly, it’s impossible to market your business effectively or manage the different e-commerce aspects if you think that all you do is simple online shopping.
Setting Up E-Commerce
If you would like to set up an e-commerce branch for your business, remember that online shopping is only one part of it. In the same vein, part of e-commerce are things like online marketing, delivery, and customer connection. Will your business be able to handle these added branches as a natural part of your business when you include e-commerce? One way to take the pressure off your own business is by using an e-commerce partner. Furthermore, these often have options for handling delivery with reliable third-party services. Outsourcing can make things easier – and less intimidating.
The Junction LLC | Truckload Shipping
As a leader in the transportation industry, we demand excellence from our entire team. Our team at The Junction LLC strives to deliver the best possible customer service and by a desire to solve our customer’s toughest transportation and supply chain needs.
Our team is dedicated to serving our customers and will take the necessary action to deliver our customers’ products safely, efficiently, and on-time. This is our promise to you!
Nationwide Services include:
- FTL (Full Truck Load) Shipping
- LTL (Less Than Truck Load) Shipping
- Transportation of refrigerated, dry and bulk shipments
- 3PL Warehousing and Logistics
- Contract Warehousing
- Trucking Freight Brokerage
Trucking & Freight Shipping Services:
- Overweight,
- Over-dimension
- Time-sensitive shipments
- LTL (Less-Than-Truckload)
- FTL (Full Truckload)
- Flatbed
- Flatbed LTLRGN (removable gooseneck lowboy)
- RGN (removable gooseneck lowboy)
- Maxi’s / A-Train / B-Train
- Heavy Haul
- Over Dimensional
- Dry Van
- Dry Van LTL
- Refrigerated
- Refrigerated LTL
- Power Only
Additional Services:
- Our sister companies can also provide warehousing in our food-grade facilities, cross-docking, and contract warehousing.