A Structural Equation Model of Factors Influencing the Perceptions toward the Ethical Issue of Privacy in E-Marketing

The purpose of the research is to investigate the factors influencing the perceptions towards the ethical issue of privacy in E-marketing. The online consumer marketplace is growing at an exponential rate, to ensure consumer confidence in this new marketplace and its continued growth, consumer concerns regarding the ethical issue of privacy must be addressed. In this work, we have shown the factors extracted from the responses of the respondents and their influence on the development of perceptions towards the ethical issue of privacy in E-marketing. The study identified that privacy policy, concern for consumer's information, security and privacy, information protection and information from children are the five dominating factors which highlight consumer's perceptions towards the ethical issue of privacy in E-marketing. The structural equation modeling has been used to confirm the factor analysis results and to study the influence of each extracted factors on the development of perceptions regarding ethical issue in E-marketing. The results indicate that privacy has become a main impediment for the growth of E-marketing. Passwords for security and safety and unsafe information variables play more dominating role for developing perception.