# **2. Insights from the literature**

E-commerce, or electronic commerce, is the sale or purchase of goods or services, carried out by means of computer networks through methods specifically designed for the purpose of receiving or processing orders, regardless of whether payment and delivery of the goods or services occur online, as defined by OECD (2011). In most cases, e-commerce is not an activity that occurs entirely in an online environment. As with other processes of virtualization of human activity made possible by information communication technologies (e.g., teleworking, telemedicine, etc.), e-commerce has led to a "fragmentation of commercial activity" (Couclelis 2004), since it separates in space and time the sub-processes that are part of the purchase and sale of goods or services.

Depending on the profile of the buyer and seller, the main types of e-commerce include (i) business-to-business (B2B), or electronic commerce of goods and services between companies; (ii) business-to-consumer (B2C), or the purchase of goods and services by individual consumers from companies via the Internet; (iii) consumerto-consumer (C2C), or the sale and purchase of goods and services between private individuals over the Internet – usually associated with the so-called sharing economy platforms; and (iv) consumer-to-business (C2B), or the electronic purchase of goods and services by companies from individuals, such as the advertising of companies on blogs or social networks of individuals or the search for individuals for online panel surveys. Among these, B2B and B2C represent the main types of goods distribution flows (Cataruzza et al. 2017). With regard to the distribution mechanisms of the products purchased online, which are of particular interest for tracking the impact of e-commerce on mobility, the options include direct distribution (home delivery) and several types of indirect distribution, such as pickup at a physical establishment of the supplier (click and collect), pickup at another establishment, and collection at a box office (Zhang et al. 2019).

Studies to date show that the growth of B2B and B2C e-commerce implies a growth in urban distribution flows of goods (Visser et al. 2014; Pettersson et al. 2018), since there is a greater fragmentation of goods to reach each consumer (replacing large flows to retail outlets), the frequency of purchase grows, and the admissible delivery time for the buyer decreases (Macharis and Kin 2017). Another reason is the higher percentage of failed deliveries in B2C/C2C e-commerce, which have to be repeated, generating more displacement of goods (Bjørgen and Ryghaug 2022). In addition, B2C/C2C e-commerce is considered to be accompanied by a greater spatial dispersion of flows, since, instead of being concentrated between production sites and specific points of sale, part of them are now destined for residential areas, leading to noticeable growth in light-duty vehicles within cities, especially in residential areas (Visser et al. 2014; Bjørgen and Ryghaug 2022). This has important implications on the consumption of public space for parking, congestion resulting from increased traffic flow and loading and unloading operations, as well as on noise and air pollution associated with road traffic.

Although a majority of the population is able to consume products through e-commerce, the adoption of e- commerce is not equal among all population groups. The sociodemographic factors most highlighted by the literature on e-commerce adoption are very similar to those of other ICT-based innovations and include age, income, education, and internet use (Shi et al. 2019). Younger people are more likely to shop online, a trend also confirmed in Colombia (República 2021). Higher e-commerce adoption is also distinctly associated with income: in addition to the income available to purchase goods and services, higher income usually means more Internet access and availability of bank accounts – conditions necessary to access e-commerce. In the case of Colombia, socioeconomic status has been found to be a very relevant factor in explaining e-commerce adoption (Sánchez-Torres et al. 2017), with the higher socioeconomic strata (4 to 6) having the highest adoption (República 2021). Studies focused on Colombia also confirm that e-commerce adoption increases with education (Sánchez-Torres, et al. 2017). The usability of platforms appears as a prominent factor in the propensity to shop online according to a study focused on young people in Medellín, Colombia (Chamorro, et al. 2019). Finally, higher population density of the person’s place of residence (e.g., urban areas) is associated with greater adoption of e-commerce, explained by higher Internet penetration, among other factors.

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