Understanding the Code of Ethics in E-business

Ethical behavior, while always an important aspect of business has become even more important over the past several years. Ethical, as defined by www.dictionary.com is: "Being in accordance with the accepted principles of right and wrong that govern the conduct of a profession". The use of the Internet has brought about additional ethical issues that companies have had to address in order to assure their customers that they are the best company to do business with. This paper will assess the effects of the global regulatory environment on e-marketing and will contain a sample code of ethics.

Global Regulatory Environment

Now that the Internet is a popular means to conduct business transactions, it has also become a media upon which to provide marketing materials. With a large majority of the population in the United States having access to the Internet, it is assumed that persons of all age and educational levels will be viewing the content on many of these sites. In this type of environment, it is possible for fraud and or harassment of consumers to occur. Legislative bodies in not only the USA, but around the world are working to deal with these issues. They want to protect their constituents, while allowing e-business to continue to grow and thrive.

To this end, there are a number of professional organizations, including the Direct Marketing Association (DMA) that has put together guidelines for their members. The idea of self-regulation is that it is preferable to have self-regulation instead of government regulations (www.the-dma.org). Self-regulations are guidelines that are voluntarily followed by the persons involved. There is no penalties that can be enforced when someone does not follow the guidelines. The only enforcement possibility, when applicable, would be to revoke a company's membership in an organization.

Government regulations are laws put in place that provide penalties for companies that break the laws. These governmental regulations are put in place when self-regulation of an industry does not prove effective in protecting the rights of consumers. In the world of e-marking, companies can face a daunting challenge in keeping track of all the federal, state, and local regulations that might be in place. Depending on the scope of the e-marketing, the regulations of other countries might also need to be followed. For large e-marketing firms, all of these regulations might prove to be costly to the companies. If they conduct business across many states and/or countries, they might have to hire someone just to monitor the different rules and regulations. This person would then be responsible for ensuring the company does not violate these regulations, subjecting the company to potentially costly fines.

Sample Code of Ethics

The following is a sample code of ethics that was created for Gloer E-Marketing, a hypothetical company working in the e-marketing field. This code of ethics was created as a guide for Gloer E-Marketing to follow when they are conducting business with individual consumers and with other businesses. It will be distributed to all company personnel and it will be required that they sign a form stating that they have read this code of ethics. This code of ethics has been created after viewing several other codes of ethics, including: http://www.afpnet.org/ and www.the-dma.org.

Section 1 - Outline of the Code of Ethics for Gloer E-Marketing

Gloer E-Marketing is a dedicated to being an industry leader in ethical business conduct and to set the level by which other companies measure themselves. To achieve this goal, it is expected that all employees conduct themselves in an appropriate manner at all times while representing Gloer E-Marketing. This means that employees will conduct business with others using only ethical, legal, and truthful means. They will not use any means that are misleading, involve purposeful switching of offers, or any other means that intends to mislead customers. Through this high level of conduct, Gloer E-Marketing will be the good corporate citizen that it strives to be.

Section 2 - Consumer Privacy

Gloer E-Marketing considers the business provided by our customers to be a privilege and an honor, not a right. To this extent, we will honor the customer's wishes as far as the privacy of any information they provide to us. Anytime customer information is gathered from the website, a link will be provided to an informational page that specifies exactly how this information will be used. Gloer E-Marketing will only use this information in the manner intended and detailed on these pages. Any planned deviations must be authorized by the consumer. Consumer information will never be sold or given to any other companies without the consumer's direct permission.

Section 3 - Ability to be removed from Contact Lists

Gloer E-Marketing is committed to honoring its customer's wishes. We will make it easy for the customer to remove themselves from any of our contact lists that they are on. When contacted, they should be removed all lists that are maintained by Gloer E-Marketing.

Section 4 - Offers

Any offers that are provided by Gloer E-Marketing will be clearly worded and have all costs and conditions clearly defined and listed. There will be no small print terms and exceptions to offers and no hidden fees to offers. By offering a clear and full disclosure up front, Gloer E-Marketing will significantly reduce the occurrences of misunderstandings that could result in negative feelings towards Gloer E-Marketing.

Section 5 - Spam and Email Solicitation

Gloer E-Marketing will not participate in mass emailing (also known as Spam) to consumers from lists that are not legitimately collected. We will only email consumers who have signed up to receive emails from Gloer E-Marketing or who have signed up for legitimate email lists.

Section 6 - Legal Standards

Gloer E-Marketing will conduct all business transactions in accordance with all applicable laws for the States and/or counties that they are conducting the business transactions in. Gloer E-Marketing will strive to avoid any actions that might be construed as toeing the line and will not purposely conduct business in a way that meets the letter of the law while violating the spirit of the law.

Conclusion

The global regulatory environment places a strong demand on companies to know the rules and regulations that apply to e-marketing. There are two types of regulations: self-regulation which involves companies voluntarily obeying rules set up by the industry and governmental regulations which are laws put into place to protect the consumers when self-regulation fails. There are many marketing organizations that have published guidelines on ethical behavior in the hopes that self-regulation will be effective and avoid the need for governmental regulations. An example of a code of ethics was created for a hypothetical company called Gloer E-Marketing. This code of ethics covered a variety of topics with guidelines on how business should be conducted.

References:

http://www.the-dma.org

http://www.ftc.gov

http://www.wipo.org

http://www.nsfre.org

http://www.dictionary.com