A01 chaf6542 06 se fm indd

Privacy and trust in e-commerce

Ethical standards

 are personal or business practices or behaviour generally considered 

acceptable by society.

Ethical standards

Practice or behaviour 

which is morally 

acceptable to society.

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Part 1  Introduction

Ethical issues and the associated laws constitute an important consideration of the Internet 

business environment for marketers. Privacy of consumers is a key ethical issue that affects 

all types of organisation regardless of whether they have a transactional e-commerce service.

(For example, we saw in Case study 1.1 that Facebook has encountered resistance from its 

users for its approach to managing their information.)

Figure 4.7

Barriers to adoption of e‑commerce services of European countries

Source: European Commission (2010): http://ec.europa.eu/information_society/digital‑

agenda/documents/edcr.pdf. No longer available.

Adverse experiences with

electronic sales in the past

0%

Language problems related to

international e-commerce

Uncertainty about

legal framework

Security concerns (related to

payments or transactions)

Problems related to logistics

Technical issues

implementing e-commerce

Need to reorganise business

processes for e-commerce

Customers do not want

to buy via e-commerce

Products or services not

suitable for e-commerce

10%

20%

30%

40%

% of enterprises (simple average between 14 countries)

50%

60%

Figure 4.6

Enterprises adopting technologies for digital business, by size class, EU27, 2012

Source: EuroStat (2013).

23

39

52

20

31

46

18

44

68

49

73

88

68

86

93

95 99 100

Internet access

Website

Sharing

information

electronically

within the enterprise

Use of Enterprise

Resource

Planning

(ERP)

Business

processes

linked to those of

suppliers/

customers

(Supply Chain

Management)

Use of

Customer

Relationship

Management (CRM)

0

20

40

60

80

100

EU27 95%

EU27 71%

EU27 53%

EU27 22%

EU27 23%

EU27 26%

Small

Medium

Large

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Chapter 4  E‑environment

A further ethical issue for which laws have been enacted in many countries is providing 

an accessible level of Internet services for disabled users. Other laws have been developed for 

managing commerce and  distance-  selling online. In many cases, the laws governing e-com-

merce are in their infancy and lag behind the applications of technology.