Ethical Issues in E-Marketing: The Perspective of Marketers, Consumers, and Economics Educators in Plateau State

Abstract

Internet now provides a wide market space irrespective of time, location and days, Thus E-commerce offers unprecedented opportunities to both developing and developed Nations in the business world. But e-marketing is now being accused for providing haven for many cyber crimes. This research examines ethnical issues in e-marketing. Specifically, the study examines the perception of marketers, consumers and Economics educators on e-marketing ethical issues and the appropriate measures for regulating them. The instruments for the study were two sets of questionnaires based on the two research questions and hypotheses that Single descriptive statistics of Mean, standard deviation and analysis of variance were used as tools for data analysis. Findings of the study indicated that marketers considered e-marketing practices as ethical whereas consumers and economics educators perceived the study to be unethical revealing a statistically significant difference in their opinions. The three groups of respondents perceived the measures espoused as appropriate for the regulating e-marketing practices. It was recommended among others that code of practice should be developed, enforced and violators prosecuted together with developing measures to secure internet based data. Since many companies, organizations and communities in the world begin to take advantage of the potential of e-commerce, critical challenges remain to be over come before e-commerce world become an asset for common people.