Online Ethical, Legal, and Regulatory Issues in B2B versus B2C
Introduction
Companies doing business on the Web must be certain of their ability to manage the liabilities that can emerge as a result of today's online business environment. This environment includes laws and ethical factors that are sometimes different from those in the brick and mortar setting. The online environment often forms a network of customers who can have considerable levels of communication with each other. Online businesses that break the law or violate ethical standards, therefore, can face swift and harsh reactions from customers and other stakeholders who will quickly learn of the businesses' unscrupulous online behaviors. Online customers also have much more interactive and complex relationships with online businesses than they do with traditional companies. This is because Internet technologies enable companies to build Web sites that can be customized to meet the specific needs of their B2B or B2C customers (Schneider, 2004). Online businesses can use this property of the online environment to manage the legal and ethical requirements of both business and consumer clientele.
Ethics
Ethics are especially important in the B2B framework because businesses selling to other businesses treat their customers more as partners and rely on reciprocal information sharing for developing mutually beneficial partnerships (Pepper, 2004). Because the relationship is more extensive, every time there is an exchange of information or data, it must be meticulously tracked and labeled as general business or confidential as appropriate (Dada, 2004).
B2B merchants must prevent unauthorized access to customer information on their Web sites, and protect the privacy of...
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...relationships can grow. This is especially important to companies that conduct part or all their business on the internet no matter which of those two types of clients they serve. It is especially important that building this environment of trust online include a thorough knowledge of the laws, regulations and ethical factors that affect a particular company's ability to serve the needs of its customers.
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References:
Dada, G. (2004, May). Marketingprofs.com. Online:
http://www.marketingprofs.com/ea/qst_question.asp?qstid=1401
FTC.gov, (2005, December). Facts for Business. Online:
http://www.ftc.gov/bcp/conline/pubs/buspubs/canspam.htm
Pepper, T (2004, May). Marketingprofs.com. Online:
http://www.marketingprofs.com/ea/qst_question.asp?qstid=1401
Schneider, G., (2004). Electronic commerce: The second wave (5th ed.). Boston, MA:
Thomson Learning
The growth of online business has grown enormously over the years. Cliptomania is a family operated and owned small e-business that primarily sells clip on earrings (Brown, DeHayes, Hoffer, Martin, & Perkins, 2012, p. 308). Cliptomania early developments were very modest, and as such the company experienced copious strategic dilemmas. An initial strategic dilemma that the company encountered when establishing and building their new e-business undertaking was to create a website for the business operations and essentially to have it fully operable. The owners, Jim and Candy elected to hire a vendor to host the website and additionally utilize the IT systems resources of the vendor to sustain their business. At the very beginning they exploited the offerings of the Yahoo Store. However, continuing down this avenue of using the services of the Yahoo Store inevitably became too costly. By using the services and business offerings of a vendor made it convenient and effortless for Jim and Candy to start their e-business store. Unfortunately the couple did not have much in the way of professional help, and so they had to create and put together the website by themselves. Additionally they also had to deal with establishing their online credibility as many customers preferred to call in their orders just to talk with a real person before being comfortable enough to place their orders via the webpage.
I found three different e-commerce companies that have recently encountered a consumer privacy data breach. Target one of the most well-known breaches affected almost 40 million people, Evernote Corp. an online note-taking service, and LivingSocial a company which offers gift certificates for customers to use in different cities around the globe. In this paper I will be discussing what happened and how each company handled the different situations that they encountered.
Ethics or rather morals entail mechanisms that defend, systematize as well as recommend conceptions of right or wrong. Many organizations develop ethical codes to ensure employees and employers understand the difference in doing good or bad. In that respect, ethics are an essential aspect of successfully running of any organization or government. Ethics ensure employee’s productivity levels are up to the required standards. It also assists them to know their rights and responsibilities. Additionally, employers, as well as any persons in management, are guided by them to ensure they provide transparent leadership. Ethics also defines how customers should be handled. Ethical codes govern the relationship between customers and an
Trevino, L., & Nelson, K. (2011). Managing business ethics - straight talk about how to
Chesseman, Henry R. Legal Environment of Business: Online Commerce, Business Ethics, and Global Issues. 8th ed. N.p.: Pearson Education, Inc. , 2016. Print.
In two distinct e-commerce business types, Business-to-business (B2B) and Business-to-Consumer (B2C), there are many differences in the way they operate. Specifically in marketing, differences include how the marketing is driven and the values of the strategies, the size of the target market and length of the sales cycle, and even the buying patterns of the target consumers. Each of these differences will be better defined and explained in the following paragraphs.
When dealing with hardship you should not forget to follow your policies and be honest. Although many online businesses are accepting the importance of website, but the potential of ethical concerns still dawdles in this situation. Because of the tremendous growth of e-commerce, it has sparked ethical concerns about privacy, deception, intellectual property, and marketing to children. One such company deceived its customers about its policy and promise. On June 9, 2000 Toysmart was a Disney owned internet vender of educational toys and games filled for bankruptcy. Toysmart placed ads to pay its investors. The ad encompassed detailed information of more than 200,000 customers, each customer worth up to $500. The offer included customer’s addresses, billing information, family information and names.
In today's competing world, many organizations are rethinking their strategies in terms of the online business and its capabilities and culture. Organizations are taking advantage of the widespread web to buy and sell goods from other companies and recently from individual customers. Exploiting these opportunities of convenience, availability and widespread reach of the web or Internet, many companies such as Amazon have benefited from the use of web successfully.
About 98.3% of all persons had used e-business services such as Octopus Card and Automatic Teller Machine (Census and Statistics Department, 2009). One of the pitfalls for the development of e-business, however, is the concerns on consumer privacy. According to Green’s (1999) survey, 54% of respondents had decided not to purchase a product because of a concern overuse of personal information collected in the e-business transaction. This essay examines the circumstances on protection of consumer privacy in e-business. As e-business is surging by an astronomical number and consumer information is a kind of property, the protection of consumer privacy in e-business becomes significant.
Treviño, L. K., & Nelson, K. A. (2007). Managing business ethics: Straight talk about how to do it right Fourth ed., Retrieved on July 30, 2010 from www.ecampus.phoenix.edu
Both from the customer and the company point of view, each customer interaction is part of an iterative learning process (Ballantyne, 2004). Further, Yau et al. (2000) advocated that the relationships between business firms and its customers have been constantly encouraged as successful business practices worldwide. The strategy of relationship marketing is of high relevance particularly in the service industries because of the intangible nature of service and their high level of customer interaction (Al-Hersh, Aburoub, & Saaty, 2014). Relationship marketing is defined as the process of engaging in proactively creating, developing and maintaining committed, interactive and profitable exchanges with targeted customers (Haker, 1999). Furthermore, Gronroos (1990) asserted that relationship marketing is to establish, maintain, enhance and commercialise customer relationship so that the objectives of the parties involved are met which can be done by a mutual exchange and fulfillment of promises. Moreover, the implementation of the relationship marketing concept at the operational level refers to relationship marketing orientation (Hau & Ngo, 2012). Relationship marketing orientation indicates the firms’ philosophy of doing business concerning relationship building by propagating developing trust, empathy, bonding, and reciprocity between a firm and its customers (Sin et al., 2005a, b; Tse et al., 2004). Trust is an important element for a successful relationship between the firm and its customers (Berry, 1995). First, trust is an essential component for a successful relationship between the firm and its customers (Berry, 1995). Trust It refers to a willingness to rely on an exchange partner in whom one has confidence (Morgan & Hunt, 1994). Empathy, as a dimension of business relationship, enables the two parties to see the situation from
Ethical business practices include assuring that the highest legal and moral standards are observed in your relationships with the people in your business community. This includes the most important person in your business, your customer. Short term profit at the cost of losing a customer is long term death for your business.
In the business world there are many fundamental aspects and situations that can lead to several issues. In order to find an optimal and professional solution, business decision makers need to apply moral and ethical standards. And it is at that moment in which business ethics perform its role. Business ethics, which is in charge of examine how companies and individuals should act in business situations, is very essential in order to reach a common agreement and to work within the laws of business and solve an arisen dilemma. Working of the hand of ethical business companies, employees, investors, directors, and even individual officers can be beneficiated and obtain most favorable outcomes.
As mentioned earlier, ethical business communication takes different forms, such as management of staff and employees to suppliers and customers. A wide range of writing exists with the significance of ethics in business communication; most disappointments in business credit to the absence of morals in their business operation, and affirm that ethics is the basic achievement of authoritative development and achievement elements. It's basic as building associations with partners and utilizing moral practices. The believability of the association assumes a part in guaranteeing productivity. It can be said that ethics are a vital segment in business achievement. Since business contacts is likewise the center of business procedures, then, ought to be joined morals in business correspondence procedure to make certain long haul gainfulness and great relations with the proprietors of hobbies. Janet and Chaney (2012) mentioned out that there is a direct correlation between ethical business communication and customer loyalty. Ethical business communication plays a role in the development of a loyal customer base because of the ethical manners of the company when it comes to communications command. Ethical business communication helps to create a positive image of the organization in the workplace, which helps in attracting
Privacy is the condition where someone personal information can not be documented and be used by others (Parent, 1983). Privacy has been and continues to be a significant issue of concern for both current and prospective electronic commerce customers. The foll...