Question

Critically discuss ethical issues companies face when implementing e-marketing strategies and how they should deal with them. 500-600 words

Answer 1

E commerce is the upcoming trend in the business world where companies try to interact with customers using online modes. It is e- marketing which helps every business to deal with the customers in a proper manner and reach out to large group of audience within less time. Also, the company can easily advertise their offerings to the customers and ensure their long run connectivity.

While implementation of the e- marketing strategies there are number of ethical issues which comes across the business and create problems in its working. Following are the ethical issues which companies face while implementation of e marketing strategies:

• Consumer privacy: the major ethical issue is protection of the important information supplied by the consumers such as passwords, debit card details, etc. E marketing involves use of internet and different websites, thus companies should put in efforts to ethically take care of the private information. Company should deal with such threat with care by keeping the customers informed about the use of their information on timely basis, using appropriate security methods, collection of information for specific reason etc.
• E- commerce security: another ethical issue faced by companies is to ensure that the person using the data is reliable and has fulfilled the authentication process properly. Moreover, companies must ensure that unethical practices should be kept check on and a strong data management system should be created to provide security to the data.
• Threat to E- commerce trust: it refers to the level of trust and confidence which the customers keep on the websites and online marketing channels which they use. But companies are facing ethical issues to deal with the data carefully without any leakage of sensitive information. For this companies can create a strong data security system, and can increase the authentication barriers while using the system, also asking for more and more permissions from customers while they use the websites.
• Securing intellectual property: with e marketing another ethical issue being faced by companies is to protect the intellectual property rights and ensuring that the individuals pay respect to the work done by others and do not use it for their own personal benefit. Any e- commerce site created by any company will be protected by the government to ensure that no information is misused. Moreover, companies must try to take care of their information and ensure to secure it with patents, copyrights and trademarks.
• Environmental issues: another issues companies face is protection of the environment while they use e commerce. The generation of e waste in hat can hamper the environment in a negative manner. Companies can take steps to deal with such ethical issue by not using toxic metals for manufacturing, using cloud computing, avoid using large amount of energy to store irrelevant data and using techniques to extend IT products life cycle so that their elimination can be delayed. By following the following measures, the companies can ensure least damage to the environment and also work ethically for long run.