Ethical Issues in Online Marketing and E-commerce

This research paper discusses the ethical issues and risks related to online marketing and e-commerce. It highlights the pros and cons of online marketing and provides a response plan to the issues and risks. The paper focuses on the user's perspective and the issues that the customer faces. It investigates the security issues of online web sources and the use of smartphone applications affecting the ethical issues of the customers. The research aims to bring out the importance of implementing ethics in business in the field of e-commerce, especially when the value of online marketing is increasing day by day.

Running head: ONLINE MARKETING
Online Marketing
Name of the Student
Name of the University
Author Note

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Table of Contents
1. Introduction................................................................................................................................................ 3
2. Research Background............................................................................................................................... 3
3. Pros and Cons of research........................................................................................................................ 4
4. Ethics Issues, Integrity and Safety Issues, and risks.................................................................................5
5. Response plan to the issues and risks......................................................................................................5
6. Conclusion................................................................................................................................................. 6
References.................................................................................................................................................... 7

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1. Introduction
Online marketing is one of the major market changing idea that came into existence in
the recent times. The 1st idea of this is came to the founder of the Amazon.com, which is in the
world’s largest online retailing platform. The online markets provides the customer with the
unique ability to sit in own place and buy the things required without even moving from the
place (Schaupp and Carter 2016). With the introduction of the online marketing the people had
the opportunity to buy the products that were once not available in many zones. But with the
introduction of the new techniques and technologies there comes some major ethical issues and
legal issues. This research focuses on some of the major ethical and illegal issues that may rise
with the time in the field of the online marketing.
2. Research Background
This aim of this research is about the issues and ethics issues when conducting research
in the field of e-commerce and online marketing. Described in this section is similar to the work
described in the previous section (Jones, et al., 2014). The research focus on the main ethical
issues, security issues related with the concept. Also the paper discusses about the pros and the
cons of the online marketing which affects the user’s daily life in the daily life. Similar work has
been performed in the past but the works does not provides us from the view of the clients or the
customer (Pires and Stanton 2015). There had been many papers published in the past but none
of the papers focussed on the customer side aide. According to the Jones and his fellow
researches use of the mobile technology and is somewhat crating the problems in the ethical
problems. This paper also investigates the security issues of the online web sources.
2.1. Purpose of the study
The main purpose of the study is to bring out the the importance to implement the ethics
in business in the field of the e-commerce especially when the value of the online marketing is
increasing day by day. Further the paper also the paper focuses on the ethical issues that benefits

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the users (Morga and Pritchard 2018). This thesis will focus on the user’s perspective and the
issues that the customer faces. Further the research will also explore the various. This paper also
investigates about the issues related to the use of the smartphone application affecting the ethical
issues of the customers.
2.2. Research problem and methodology:
Based on the study and the purpose of the report the research will be able to answer the
following questions:
1. What are some of the main ethical issues related to online marketing?
2. What are some of the pros and cons of this research?
3. How the organisation uses the privacy policy and secretly to maintain to solve the ethical
problems of the users?
3. Pros and Cons of research
Pros of the research:
This paper deals with the ethical issues that are related with the online marketing and
ecommerce websites (Agag et al. 2016). The e-marketing is one of the major topic in the
world today as no people in the world is there who have not even once heard of the term
online marketing. This research brings out some of the major factors that may hurt the
sentiments of the normal people (Limbu, Wolf and Lunsford 2012.). Also this paper
brings out the security concerns of the people that they may face while using an online
marketing website. This issues are ethical dilemmas that the people may face, for
example of this the some of the online websites seels the doormats printed with the other
country flags, and this is one of the major disrespect to the country and people of that
country (Tandoc Jr and Thomas 2015). This research highlights some of such issues.

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3.1. Cons:
3.2. Some of the major cons of this paper is that the factor that it brings out the harsh
reality of the business strategy of the organisations. These are some of the major big
organisations that rules the business word of the organisation. This paper is unable to
bring out and highlight all the factors that are responsible for the unethical practices
that are going on in the organisations.
4. Ethics Issues, Integrity and Safety Issues, and risks
Some of the major ethical issues and the safety of the clients are discussed in this section.
4.1. Ethical Issue:
Anything that hurts the sentiments of the any person can be called an ethical problem.
Some of the major ethical problems that the customers face are high pricing of the products,
selling of the products that are somewhat illegal. Storing personal data’s in the websites are
some of the major ethical issues.
4.2. Security and the Risks:
Although the organisations provides many security options for the customers, but there
always lies some of the major risks. Some of the security that the organisations provide their
clients are, secured payment methods, safe browsing of the products, replacement options. But
there always lies some of the risks, like the stealing of the private data from the users device.
One of the other major risk is that the information of the product that is provided can be
incorrect.
5. Response plan to the issues and risks

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Some of the major things that can be done in order to reduce the risk that are related to
the online marketing is checking the authenticity of the products. Checking whether the product
is genius or not, or if there is any copyright protection to the product. Also the customers can ask
for the authenticity of the products.
6. Conclusion
Thus, concluding the topic it can be said that the online marketing is one of the most
growing business in the world and more and more organisations are coming to the sections. The
organisation are trying to provide as much of the security needed to provide the customers but
are failing somehow. As a customer one needs to verify the authentication of the product, the
price tags and other issues related. IT is the work of the organisation to look in the factor that no
unethical practices goes on in the working process of the business as that may hamper the
productivity of the organisation.

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References
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validation of an instrument to measure online retailing ethics: Consumers’ perspective. Internet
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Jones, B. H., Chin, A. & Aiken, P., 2014. Risky business: Students and smartphones.
TechTrends, 58(6), pp. 73-83.
Limbu, Y.B., Wolf, M. and Lunsford, D., 2012. Perceived ethics of online retailers and
consumer behavioral intentions: The mediating roles of trust and attitude. Journal of Research in
Interactive Marketing, 6(2), pp.133-154.
Morgan, N. and Pritchard, A., 2018. Gender, Advertising and Ethics: Marketing Cuba. Tourism
Planning & Development, 15(3), pp.329-346.
Pires, G.D. and Stanton, J., 2015. Revisiting ethnic marketing ethics. The Routledge Companion
to Ethnic Marketing, p.327.
Schaupp, L.C. and Carter, L., 2016. Ethics and social networking: An interdisciplinary approach
to evaluating online information disclosure. International Journal of Systems and Service-
Oriented Engineering (IJSSOE), 6(2), pp.1-28.
Tandoc Jr, E.C. and Thomas, R.J., 2015. The ethics of web analytics: Implications of using
audience metrics in news construction. Digital Journalism, 3(2), pp.243-258.
Yakovenko, I. et al., 2015. The efficacy of motivational interviewing for disordered gambling:
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