Small and medium-sized enterprises do not need the infrastructure of large companies anymore to market their products. This causes an enormous growth of information-based products and services, as well as a tremendous increase in accessibility of physical, not digitizable products. On the other hand, market transparency of suppliers, customers, and products leads to cost pressure for vendors. Offers from all over the world can be found online, locating and comparing potential suppliers of products or services on the internet leads to lower transaction costs. Altogether, competition leads to constant pressure on market prices and demands for extra services to be delivered as 'add-on' to traditional service packages.
Common products sold via the web include books, music, stocks, groceries, travel, etc.
This approach certainly deserves the term 'e-commerce'. The web also widely serves as a marketing medium. Nothing new, but this has to be distinguished from the concept of a sales channel. To what degree the last two points are correctly titled e-commerce shall be left up to the reader, they are definitely a crucial ingredient to doing business in Cyberspace. In any case, the crux of the matter is whether a company is doing well in its traditional business.