Objectives of knowledge management

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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138
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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139
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.