B2C electronic contracts

José Engrácia Antunes

Keywords

E-commerce; Electronic Contracts; Electronic Procurement; Consumer Contracts; “Business-to-Consumer”; Digital Platforms.

Abstract

B2C electronic contracts are one of the most relevant outcomes of e-commerce: e-contracting between businesses and consumers operates 24 hours a day, 7 days a week, and 365 days a year, currently representing a global turnover of more than $2 trillion worldwide and €700 billion in Europe. Its importance has also reached Portugal: in 2022, 43% of Portuguese consumers made online purchases and 18% of Portuguese companies received online orders. This centrality of B2C electronic contracts has increasingly made them a new paradigm of consumer contracts. This paper provides an introductory study on the juridical regime of this consumer contract, successively reviewing its legal sources, requirements, negotiation, formation, confirmation, form and proof, and extinction, as well as other aspects (in particular, contracting within the scope of electronic platforms).