Analyzing the Impact of Consumer Trust and Data Privacy on the Performance of E-Commerce Businesses in Australia

Analyzing the Impact of Consumer
Trust and Data Privacy on the
Performance of E-Commerce
Businesses in Australia

Table of Contents
Research Title........................................................................................................................................2
Introduction...........................................................................................................................................2
Detail Statement of the Problem............................................................................................................3
Research Aim and Objectives................................................................................................................4
Research Questions...............................................................................................................................4
Justification and Potential Output of the Research project....................................................................4
Why is the chosen project important both theoretically and practically?...........................................4
What are potential outputs and outcomes of the research?....................................................................5
Conceptual Framework..........................................................................................................................6
Methodology and Presenting Secondary Data.......................................................................................8
Secondary Data..................................................................................................................................8
Primary Data......................................................................................................................................9
Sampling Technique and Sample Size...............................................................................................9
Organization of the Study, project Budget and Schedule...................................................................9
Budget for Conducting the Study....................................................................................................10
Gantt Chart......................................................................................................................................11
References...........................................................................................................................................12
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Research Title
There are several factors that tend to make a significant impact on the consumers’ trust
towards the businesses. Thus on the basis of the above aspects, the research title has been
designed as follows:
Analyzing the Impact of Consumer Trust and Data Privacy on the performance of E-
Commerce Businesses in Australia
Introduction
With rapid advancements and innovations in technology like internet, the contemporary
business environment has undergone significant changes. Internet has led to the development
of a global marketplace with huge business opportunities. In this context, Doig, (2016)
advocated that internet has not only proved to be beneficial for the businesses, rather internet
has also enabled consumers with more power to control several aspects of their lives that
include knowledge, time, decision, communications, satisfaction and their expenditure.
However, in the present era of internet and e-commerce, trust and privacy has emerged as an
important aspect. It has been opined by Tsai et al., (2011) that one of the most important
reason that consumers at present refrain themselves often from making their purchases from
internet vendors is the lack of trust and concern about their data privacy. So, it can be said
that there exist a need for promoting trust and confidence among the consumers to encourage
them to make their purchases online. The consumers prefer their personal information and
identity to be confidential because of the fear of getting exposed to online fraud. Moreover,
the potential risk in context to e-commerce is high because of the lack of physical interaction,
anonymity and distance. Trust has been advocated by Li et al., (2011) as an important tool for
a successful transaction in both the online and offline environment and a single incident of
breach of data privacy on the part of the internet vendors can affect the level of trust of the
consumers towards the vendor and can have a significant negative impact on their business.
Thus, drawing inferences from the above aspects and the challenges that internet vendors face
in enhancing the level of trust on the part of the consumers, the researcher in the present
study would emphasize on analyzing the impact of consumer trust and data privacy on the
performance of e-commerce businesses in Australia.
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Detail Statement of the Problem
While comparing the traditional business environment with the online business environment,
it is observed that that physical cues like the appearance of the store and direct contact of the
consumers with the sales person in case of traditional shopping environment is absent in the
online shopping environment (Youn, 2009). However, with rapid globalization and
advancements in technology, more and more business organizations are swinging towards
internet to interact directly with the customers and provide them better services. So, this
result in getting more customers conducted in a network generating huge volume of customer
data. These data prove to be useful from the business organizations for extracting useful
knowledge about the customers and predicting the buying behavior of the consumers. These
data are used not only to serve the above mentioned purpose of analyzing the consumer
purchase behavior; rather they are also sold to third parties (Lee et al., 2011). So, this raises
the concern of data privacy and misuse of the customers’ private data and personal
information. Online vendors are also involved in creating consumers’ profiles of their online
activities like the websites that are most frequently visited by the customers, their browsing
habits to efficiently leverage their past behavior for predicting and influencing their future
behavior. This type of personalization tends to depend on two factors as has been proposed
by Taylor et al., (2009). The factors include the ability of the marketer to acquire and process
the information of the consumers and the willingness on the part of the consumers to share
their information and make use of the personalization services. Thus, it can be said that the
personalization and privacy can be in conflict that can be referred to as personalization-
privacy paradox. So, it has been proposed by Urban et al., (2009) that the above aspect leads
to major challenge for the e-commerce businesses since breach of data privacy and misuse of
the personal information and details of the consumers can lead to adverse impact on the
business and also on their performance.
So, it becomes important to analyze the factors that can lead to enhanced relationship of trust
between the consumers and e-commerce businesses. Thus, the researcher in the present study
would aim at analyzing the factors that can enhance the trust of the consumers towards online
vendors and how concerns related to data privacy can affect the performance of the e-
commerce businesses in Australia.
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