In ecommerce, a channel is any medium through which you sell your products,for example, Shopify, Amazon, Jabong, eBay and Snapdeal etc. A sales channel can be a marketplace, shopping cart or a B2B medium.
Classification of channels
Business to Business (B2B)
A channel which is an ecommerce portal and that buys from Seller and invoices the customer. In this interaction the transactions are happening between businesses, these are classified as B2B channels.
Marketplace
An ecommerce marketplace lists the sellers’ products, collects the orders, receives payments, forwards the orders to the sellers and track the deliveries. And for all this it deducts a fee or earns a commission from the seller.
Shopping Cart
It is the standard ecommerce platform with cart solutions for your own ecommerce website.
Some other related terms (which can help you):
Store
A Store is a centre where product inventory is physically stored and is open for users to come and purchase. Generally a store is referred to as that place where a customer can visit and pick up the inventory it is holding, eventually selling it to him.
Fulfillment Centers
Here the vendor can store products in the channel’s fulfillment centers, and these fulfillment centers pick, pack, ship, and provide customer service for the sold products.
This channel can be added just the way other channels are configured in the system.