Business Models for Electronic Commerce

The advent of electronic commerce has posed a challenge for traditional businesses with “disintermediation” of the value chain. The intermediaries in the classical “brick and mortar” economy have been substituted by what are called as the “Infomediaries”.However Infomediaries are not the only business models that have sprung up with the boom of electronic business. In just three or four short years, e-commerce has evolved at lightning speed through a succession of persuasive business models and approaches. There are many new business models that are being developed along with the traditional business models.This paper attempts to analyse various business models on the basis of business processes like Brokerage, Advertising, Merchant, Manufacturer etc. Some of these models are similar to the physical business models but the medium of transaction has now changed to electronic medium e.g: Manufacturer, Advertising.However the analyses is limited by the absence of any clear-cut Taxonomy for categorizing the Business Models for electronic commerce.