How Ethical, Legal and Regulatory Issues Differ Between B2b and B2c Web Sites

Like traditional brick-and-mortar business’s, business-to-business (B2B) and business-to-consumer (B2C) web sites face ethical, legal, and regulatory concerns. Although both B2B and B2C sites share similarities’ in web-based jurisdictional issues and general ethical considerations, each site has its own specific concerns due to the end user relationship of the consumer versus business (Schneider, 2004). Whether the end user is a business or a consumer, there is usually a transaction or sale of a particular product or service. Since the Internet launches online business into the global economy, businesses need to be aware of the different ethical, legal, and regulatory issues to avoid potential e-commerce liability.

Ethics in any kind of business, be it traditional or e-business, makes specific judgments about what is right or wrong, which is to say, it makes claims about what ought to be done or what ought not to be done. Ethics is universal and is applied to anything that has relations to individuals. Ethics is there to guide business from harming the general public and with this in mind; ethics is also tied with legalities to help defend its principles. Ethics and legality works hand in hand to create a peaceful environment in doing business. (Pwebs)

B2B’s audience and clients are not individual people as compared to B2C websites. These individuals are members of a company. When conducting business you need to be aware who has authority, for example, for signing a non-disclosure agreement or placing an order on behalf of a company. Because the relationship is more extensive, every time you exchange information issues like identity theft are increasing in numbers, because sites are not secured enough. Data has to be carefully tracked and labeled as general business or confidential as appropriate. As with ethics, the proper behaviors of participants are typically set forth in regulatory codes developed by trade associations, commercial standard groups and the professions. B2B and B2C ethics and legal issues are very much alike, although victims in B2B have more advantage when resolving legal matters since procedures are very much black and white. You do have CAN-SPAM and there are gambling laws and there are laws like the Federal Telecommunications Act and the Computer Decency Act and other laws on child porn, but the Internet is largely