Development of a framework on ethical issues based on complaint data about electronic commerce

Abstract

Ethical business practices of a company create a relationship, which depends on trust and confidence, between the consumers and the company, and provides mutually rewarding consequences. However, since the electronic commerce (e-commerce) is a new business model it does not have adequate ethical standards. Consumer complaints about on-line stores are an effective tool for exploring and analysing the ethical risk areas of e-commerce. Therefore, in this dissertation, it is aimed to develop an ethical framework by exploring the potential ethical issues about on-line stores based on the consumer complaints in United States of America (USA) and in Turkey.In this study, first an in-depth literature review about business ethics, and the basic literature about consumer complaint behavior are presented. The objectives of the empirical research are: to find out the complaining tendency of American and Turkish consumers, to find out the frequency distribution of complaints among on-line businesses and among on-line stores, to identify the major complaint areas about on-line stores, and to explore whether there are any differences among on-line stores regarding the type of complaints that they receive, to classify the complaint areas, andto describe the feelings and attitudes of complainants. This is an exploratory research, which collects secondary data from the complaint web sites both in USA and Turkey. From USA 4019 complaint letters, and from Turkey 80 letters have been content analysed in order to detect the potential ethical risk areas. It is found that the Turkish complaints show an increasing tendency, while US complaints exhibit a peak point at 2001. There are differences between USA and Turkey about the distribution of complaints among on-line businesses and about the variety of on-line stores. In USA, complaints about Internet service providers constitute majority of total complaints, while in Turkey complaints about on-line stores compound the majority of complaints. In USA, there are 18 different store types, whereas in Turkey, there are only nine store types. It is found that there are 96 different complaint areas; and they are classified under 11 complaint categories through the content analysis process. After describing the feelings and attitudes of consumers through a series of research proposals, an ethical framework for e-commerce is presented. The study ends with the implications for consumers, for business managers, for legal and governmental entities, and for academia. This dissertation contributes to the literature in multiple ways. First of all, this study is unique, since it employs all the available on-line complaints as a tool to develop an ethical framework. Secondly, this thesis is one of the initial studies in the field of business ethics and electronic commerce. Finally, this is an interdisciplinary study, which contributes to business ethics literature as well as to literature on complaint behavior and electronic commerce.