Ethics in e-marketingA project report on-

Refers to the application of marketing principles and techniques via electronic media.

Encompasses all activities a business conducts via the worldwide web with the aim of attracting new business, retaining current business and developing its brand identity.

E-marketing

E-marketing components

e-marketing

affiliate marketing

banner advertising

SMOSEO

PPC marketing

e-mail marketing

social media marketing

Affiliate marketing is the technique where other publishers and websites will promote your business.

It is the type of performance based marketing

A business rewards one or more affiliated for each visitors or customers brought by the affiliates’ own marketing efforts. Example: amazon.com

Affiliate marketing

Banner advertising

A rectangular graphic display that stretches across the top or bottom of a website or down or left sidebar.

Banner ads are image based rather than text based and are popular form of website advertising.

The host is paid for banner ads through one of three methods:

Cost per impression.Cost per click.Cost per action.

SMO can be defined as the science and art of getting free targeted traffic to your website from facebook, twitter, LinkedIn, or other social media networks through various social activities like blogging, status updates etc.

Social media optimization:

It involves creating the right type of content and building a site that is easy to share on social networks and is friendly to social media users.

SEO is a methodology of strategies, techniques, and tactics to increase the amount of visitors to a website by obtaining a high-ranking placement in the search results page of a search engine (SERP) including google,yahoo, bing etc.

Search engine optimisation

PPC is the type of sponsored online advertising that is used on a wide range of websites, including search engines, where the advertiser only pays if a web user clicks on their ad.

Pay per click advertising

It uses e-mail as the marketing communication delivery method.

Email marketing is used in a number of ways by organizations and marketers for brand and customer loyalty building, acquiring or converting customers, company advertisements, or for communicating promotional offers and much more.

E-mail marketing

SMM is a term that describes the use of social media tools such as social networks as part of a company’s marketing plan, sales tactics, public relation and customer service.

Social media can help build links .Many people also perform searches at social media

sites to find social media content.

Social media marketing

In today’s internet world, building an online presence is imperative for all businesses.

Focus is on to target the masses at an affordable price by allowing them to undertake a personalized marketing approach.

The flexible and cost-effective nature of e-marketing makes it particularly suitable for small businesses.

Benefits of e-marketing

Wider prospect reach- It allows you to find new markets and potentially compete worldwide with only a small investment.

Reduction in costs through automation and use of electronic media- presents a strong business case in cost savings.

24/4 marketing- With a website your customers can find out about your products anytime.

Some benefits of e-marketing are-

Personalized one-on-one marketing- one can instantly get information about products. With personalized e-marketing, you can create very influential and targeted campaigns.

Increased interactivity- Through two-way communications, interactive games or quizzes, you can engage your audience and give them greater involvement and control over their web experience.

Increased ability to track results- It easier to measure how effective your campaigns are.

Benefits contd.

6 S’s framework:Sell: Using the internet to sell products and services.Serve: Using the internet to serve customers.Speak: Using the internet to communicate with customers (both existing and potential).Save: Using the internet to save/reduce costs.Sizzle: Using the internet to build brand identity.Specific: specify what is to be achieved

Objectives of e-marketing-

Action- oriented: state which actions need to be taken and who will take them.

Realistic: achievable with the resources available.Time specific: establish specified time frames.

Some other objectives are:

The average tablet user spends 13.9 hours per week with the device. (Source: OPA ) 

Text messaging users send or receive an average of 35 messages per day. (Source: Forrester)

Email opens on smart phones and tablets have increased 80% over the last six months. (Source: Litmus )

45% of the world's 2 billion internet users live in Asia. (Source: Ecommerce Europe ) 

Some interesting facts about e-marketing

61% of emails received at professional email accounts are non-essential. (Source:Mimecast )

20% of Facebook users have purchased something because of ads or comments they saw there.

64% of Smartphone owners are using their mobile devices to shop online . (Source:eDigitalResearch ) 

91% of online adults use social media regularly. (Source: Experian )

Contd.

Ethics are the basic concepts and fundamental principles of decent human conduct.

It includes study of universal values such as the essential equality of all men and women, human or natural rights, obedience to the law of land, concern for health and safety and, increasingly, also for the natural environment.

Ethics

Sociologist Raymond Baumhart asked business people-“What does an ethic mean to you?” Among their replies were the following-“Ethics has to do with what my feeling tell me right or wrong.”“Ethics has to do with my religious beliefs.”“Being ethical is doing what the law requires.”“Ethics consists of the standards of behavior our society

accepts.”“I don’t know what the word means.” 

Contd.

Through the internet, marketers can realize lucrative business opportunities worldwide.

the internet is a widely used medium that acquires and delivers information and services to customers and business.

It is perpetually transforming the way people and businesses interact with each other.

With such transformation, impressions of expressed ethical conduct by both parties are now at the forefront.

Ethics in e-marketing

Internet is indeed powerful but “with great power comes great responsibility”.

Internet is not the value free zone. It has sensitivity to the social culture.

The question is what kind of marketing practices can be considered ethical on the Internet.

Many companies have pushed the line on what is ethical to do on the Internet, and it has come to the point that even though there are no laws governing these areas, there are lawsuits arising.

Ethics contd.

AccessPersonal intrusionPrivacyMoralityDeceptionSecurity

Classes of ethical problems on internet-

Ethics affects all aspects of your business. It affects first and foremost the company’s brand

image and subsequently how sales, marketing, and advertising principles are applied to the task of making company profitable for the long haul.

Ethics affects your employees, and how they represent your company online, on the phone, in person, and all types of customer service and customer relations .

Ethics play a big role in establishing the reputation of a business.

Importance of ethics in e-marketing

Whether it is ‘clicks and mortar’ or ‘bricks and mortar’, good ethical standards help create a strong foundation for better and improved working relations.

Application of good ethical standards helps build a brand name for an online business.

It also affects company sales and marketing strategies, which help in the development of a business.

It has become trickier to fathom whom to trust while transacting online and which websites are secure to click on.

With the entire unprincipled, illegitimate Internet marketing schemes and fraudulent tactics, online marketers have to be very careful while promoting their products and services through internet.

Contd.

Privacy: it refers to a moral right of individuals to avoid intrusion into their personal affairs by third parties.

Privacy of personal data such as identities, likes and dislikes is a major concern to consumers particularly with the dramatic increase in identity theft.

Effective e-marketing requires a delicate balance to be struck between the benefits the individual customer will gain to their online experience through providing personal information and the amount and type of information that they are prepared for companies to hold about them.

Major ethical issues in e-marketing are as under:

What are the main information types used by the internet marketer which are governed by ethics and legislature? The information needs are:

Contact information (name, postal address, email, contact number etc.)]

Profile information (age, sex, social group to which person belongs)

Behavioral information on a single and multiple sites.

Ethical issues concerned with personal information ownership have been carefully summarized into the following areas:

PrivacyAccuracyPropertyAccessibilityTransparencySecurityLiability

Hoaxes are false emails being distributed as widely as possible to fool the largest number of Internet users, who believe they are helping others or serve a good cause.

Unlike viruses, hoaxes don't represent a software threat your PC. But instead may affect the novice user in other ways:

The loss of credibility of crucial information sent by mail.The flooding of mail boxes. Considered as spam.Damage the reputation of a person, corporation, and

association.

Scams/ hoaxes

Internet fraud and hoaxes have become a great and expensive problem in today’s high pace world of computers.

It also raises the moral and ethical issues involved in the transactions of goods over the net and also who is trustworthy.

There are many types of fraud that can be found on the Internet, the first of which are hoaxes.

Contd.

The top ten is as follows: 1. Online auction transactions, 2. General Merchandise Sales, 3. Computer hardware/software sales, 4. Internet related services,5. Work-at-home plans, 6. Business opportunities/franchises, 7. Multilevel marketing/pyramids, 8. Credit card offers, 9. Advance fee loans, 10. Job listings/employment offers.

Top 10 scams and hoaxes

Spam is flooding the Internet with many copies of the same message, in an attempt to force the message on people who would not otherwise choose to receive it.

Most spam is commercial advertising, often for dubious products, get-rich-quick schemes, or quasi-legal services.

Spam costs the sender very little to send -- most of the costs are paid for by the recipient or the carriers rather than by the sender.

There are two main types of spam- Cancellable Usenet spam- it is a single message sent to 20 or

more Usenet newsgroups. Email spam: it targets individual users with direct mail

messages

Spams

Cookies are the small text files stored on end-users consumers to enable websites to identify the user.

It is the data file placed on your computer that identifies the individual computers.

A cookie, also known as an HTTP cookie, web cookie, or browser cookie, is a small piece of data sent from a website and stored in a user's web browser while the user is browsing that website.

Every time the user loads the website, the browser sends the cookie back to the server to notify the website of the user's previous activity.

Although cookies cannot carry viruses, and cannot install malware on the host computer, tracking cookies and especially third-party tracking cookies are commonly used as ways to compile long-term records of individuals' browsing histories.

Cookies

Session cookies- A session cookie exists only in temporary memory while the user navigates the website. Web browsers normally delete session cookies when the user closes the browser.

Persistent cookie- A persistent cookie outlasts user sessions. If a persistent cookie has its Max-Age set to one year (for example), then, during that year, the initial value set in that cookie would be sent back to the server every time the user visited the server. Persistent cookies are also called tracking cookies.

Secure cookie- A secure cookie has the secure attribute enabled and is only used via HTTPS, ensuring that the cookie is always encrypted when transmitting from client to server. This makes the cookie less likely to be exposed to cookie theft.

Types of cookies

Http Only cookie- The Http Only attribute is supported by most modern browsers. On a supported browser, an Http Only session cookie will be used only when transmitting HTTP, thus restricting access from other, non-HTTP APIs such as JavaScript. This restriction mitigates but does not eliminate the threat of session cookie theft via cross-site scripting (XSS).This feature applies only to session-management cookies, and not other browser cookies.

Third-party cookie- First-party cookies are cookies that belong to the same domain that is shown in the browser's address bar. Third-party cookies are cookies that belong to domains different from the one shown in the address bar.

Super cookie- A "supercookie" is a cookie with an origin of a Top-Level Domain (such as .com) or a Public Suffix (such as .co.uk). It is important that super cookies are blocked by browsers, due to the security holes they introduce. If unblocked, an attacker in control of a malicious website could set a supercookie and potentially disrupt legitimate user requests to another website that shares the same Top-Level Domain or Public Suffix as the malicious website.

Zombie cookie- Some cookies are automatically recreated after a user has deleted them; these are called zombie cookies. This is accomplished by a script storing the content of the cookie in some other locations.

Session management: Cookies may be used to maintain data related to the user during navigation, possibly across multiple visits. Cookies were introduced to provide a way to implement a "shopping cart" (or "shopping basket"), a virtual device into which users can store items they want to purchase as they navigate throughout the site. Cookies provide a quick and convenient means of client/server interaction.

Personalization: Cookies may be used to remember the information about the user who has visited a website in order to show relevant content in the future. Many websites use cookies for personalization based on users' preferences.

Tracking: Tracking cookies may be used to track internet users' web browsing.

Uses of cookie:

Inaccurate identification- If more than one browser is used on a computer, each usually has a separate storage area for cookies. Hence cookies do not identify a person, but a combination of a user account, a computer, and a web browser.

Inconsistent state on client and server- The use of cookies may generate an inconsistency between the state of the client and the state as stored in the cookie. This can lead to unreliability, confusion, and bugs.

Inconsistent support by devices- The problem with using mobile cookies is that most devices do not implement cookies; for example, Nokia only supports cookies on 60% of its devices, while Motorola only supports cookies on 45% of its phones.

Drawbacks of cookie

Most people started using the internet for its email capabilities. As millions of users added each year to e-mail, most users tend to believe that their information is safe and private. They couldn’t be wrong.

E-mail is not immediately delivered from the originator’s computer to your computer.

Each server along the route makes a copy of the mail as it is received, and then keeps it until next site signals that it has been successfully received. If the “receive” code does not come back- the e-mail just “sits there.”

E-mail Confidentiality/ privacy

Another ethical concern facing online businesses is what types of “gimmicks” they are willing to utilize in order to attract users to their sites. While vulgar humor and moronic “stooges” get laughs and attention, what other devices will websites use to lure potential customers?

Attracting Users

Government.Regulatory authority.Organizations.Educators.Parents.Ourselves.

Who should act to check the unethical issues on e-marketing?

In today’s society computers are becoming an increasingly valuable tool to get most people through their daily lives.

However, people are now growing angry and annoyed with cookies and pop up ads. The main reason why so many people are getting angry and annoyed is because they feel as if cookies and pop up ads are bad things that computer companies are trying to sabotage them with.

There is nothing wrong with advertising on the Internet, but sometimes the way in which the companies go about advertising is not ethical.

Conclusion

Ethics are crucial to establish and maintain a long term relationship with consumer that business should beware of problematic practices in e-commerce.

Paying close attention to the ethical use of web-based technologies will constitute a differentiating power for business.

In fact, what lies at the roots of this power is trust.Trust forms the essence of ethical relationships.

However, lack of regulation on the internet may cause frequent ethical abuses. Hence, there should be a check on the activities on internet because of the wider scope of it in future.

E-business should establish a relationship based on trust both with the consumers and employees and should further develop it.

A presentation by:Raveena kaushalClass: MBA 1st semesterSection: DRoll no: 140423464School of management studies Punjabi university, Patiala

Thank you