Personal Information Sharing. A Major User Concern in Online B2C Market (PDF)

Doctoral Thesis / Dissertation from the year 2013 in the subject Business economics - Miscellaneous, grade: A, University of Kent, course: Business Administration, language: English, abstract: The Cyber world has seen a growth in the online business over the past two decades and the e-commerce is expanding since then. Online business is believed to have bought ease and comfort in the lives of the people and now there is no distinction of states and regions. Anyone can buy anything from anywhere in the world just with the click of a button. Amazon.com was amongst the pioneers of the e-commerce business and evolving the dot-com bubble. It is still one of the leading players of the online business markets; however, it has seen a lot of ups and downs while reaching to this level. A number of players keep coming into this market to try their luck, some succeed and some fail. With the squeezing time at the disposal of the people, more and more people are using the online sources for shopping.
However, the major concern that comes up is the security concern. This is not about the physical security but the information security of the users. A lot of businesses have failed due to lack of pertinent information security. The number of attacks on renowned vendors has made the people think twice before feeding their information on the website. Weak encryption and no properly laid down security policies have made people vulnerable. Security breaches of the information are prevalent in the news and a number of researchers have worked in this regard to see how the information security concerns disturb the people. This research paper studies the factors that influence the consumers’ reluctance to share their personal information on the web. The B2C online market is the studied and the consumers’ concerns are highlighted with the help of the conceptual model. B2C is a widely spread Internet market and the general public tends to be more careful while giving out their personal information. The conceptual model designed for the study is divided into variables and further the variables are gauged with the help of the hypotheses, ultimately those hypotheses are then tested using various models to reach a conclusion. What makes this study unique is that the factors and topic is studied in the light of the Social Contract Theory. The Social Contract will help to analyze the issue in the behavioral perspective. The Social Contract is based on the human obligations of one another and on the state as the supreme authority that establishes the principals that maintain the balance of a society.