Assistant Professor, Department of Commerce, University of Jammu, J&K, India.
Abstract
In the recent years, increased usage of the Internet has
induced the marketers and customers for online selling and
buying of products and services. E-marketing provides an
opportunity to sell and purchase various brands of products
having huge discounts; but at the same time, there are
chances of frauds, deception, hacking, duplication, and other
unethical practices in the e-marketing. This paper aims to
explore the extent of customers’ perceived ethical virtues
followed by the e-marketers for responsible leadership
and dealing with customers. This empirical study is based
upon the responses obtained from 200 customers through a
questionnaire. The questionnaire comprised of demographic
variables along with the Likert scale items representing
the customers’ perceived ethical practices. The reliability
and validity of data were duly assessed through various
measures. The exploratory factor analysis summarised the
variables into four factors namely security, non-deception,
reliability, and privacy. The findings indicate that customers
perceived e-marketers as moderately ethical and suggested
for more security, privacy, and reliability through formulation
of ethical codes, publicising the unethical practices of
concerns by media, and proactive role of regulatory bodies
in promoting ethics in e-marketing for protecting the interest
of various stakeholders. It is obvious that ethical practices
lead to customer satisfaction, enhanced performance, and
positive word of mouth thus edifying trust, commitment,
and loyalty to e-marketers. Contrary to this, unethical
practices by e-marketers make the customers dissatisfied,
reduce performance, and spread irresponsible leadership as
well as negative word of mouth about the company, which
seriously tarnish the image of the company in the eyes of all
stakeholders. The study will be highly useful for researchers,
practitioners, marketers, and policy makers with new insights for research and formulation of policies with regard
to ethics in e-marketing.
Keywords: Customers, E-marketing, Ethics, Stakeholders, Leadership
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