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Electronic Commerce and Data Privacy 215<br />

interchange (EDI). More often, though, e-commerce is simply thought of as the<br />

buying and selling of goods and services through the Inter<strong>net</strong>, particularly the World<br />

Wide Web (WWW). The two most common forms of e-commerce are labeled<br />

business-to-consumer (B2C) and business-to-business (B2B) e-commerce.<br />

B2C e-commerce may be thought of as the basic type of e-commerce because<br />

it was first exploited by retail “e-businesses” such as Amazon.com, eTrade, and<br />

eBay that were created as Inter<strong>net</strong>-only versions of traditional <strong>books</strong>tores, brokerage<br />

firms, and auction houses. These e-businesses could deliver almost unlimited<br />

content on request and could react and make changes in close to real time because<br />

of the <strong>free</strong>dom from the geographic confines and costs of running actual stores<br />

(Buckley, 1999). These factors soon caused traditional “brick and mortar” stores to<br />

launch their own online stores (e.g., Barnes and Noble, Merrill Lynch, Southebys).<br />

B2B e-commerce has many of the same advantages that hold for B2C ecommerce<br />

organizations such as the ability to increase the services they can offer<br />

their business customers. Inter<strong>net</strong> technology has helped create new relationships<br />

and to streamline and augment supply-chain processes. The roles of logistic and<br />

financial intermediaries (e.g., FedEx, UPS, American Express) are expanding as<br />

these changes are occurring (Buckley, 1999).<br />

E-commerce is not without risks or barriers. Market conditions constantly<br />

change as new competitors can easily enter the market with new business models.<br />

Customer loyalty is fleeting, as competitors are only a mouse click away. Competitive<br />

advantage is short-lived, as traditional barriers are rendered irrelevant by<br />

technological advances (Oracle, 1999). One risk that has received a lot of attention<br />

recently concerns the privacy and security of personally identifiable information<br />

(PII) transmitted over the Inter<strong>net</strong> and stored by the organization collecting the data<br />

(Hoffman, Novak, & Chatterjee, 1993).<br />

PRIVACY<br />

According to Westin (1967), privacy is “the claim of individuals, groups or<br />

institutions to determine for themselves when, how, and to what extent information<br />

about them is communicated to others.” Information privacy can be thought of as<br />

“the ability of the individual to personally control information about one’s self”<br />

(Stone, Gardner, Gueutal, & McClure, 1983). Personal information privacy has<br />

become one of the most important ethical issues of the information age (Culnan,<br />

1993; Mason, 1986; Smith, 1994).<br />

Data privacy is a major issue facing nearly every business in every country in<br />

the world. Over the past several years, many surveys have found consistently high<br />

levels of concern about privacy (Cranor, Reagle, & Ackerman, 1999; Culnan, 1993;<br />

GVU, 1998; Harris Louis and Associates & Westin, 1991, 1994, 1996; Louis Harris<br />

& Associates, Inc., 1999; Milberg, Burke, Smith, & Kallman, 1995; Smith, Milberg,<br />

& Burke, 1996). This attention to the data privacy issue has been brought about, in<br />

Copyright © 2003, Idea Group Inc. Copying or distributing in print or electronic forms without written<br />

permission of Idea Group Inc. is prohibited.

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