A Research on Protection of Consumer Privacy in E - Commerce

E-commerce has emerged as one of the vital components of today’s business due to the recent developments in Information Technologies (IT). E-commerce, which has various types, is the act of buying and selling goods and services over the Internet. As business to business (B2B) e-commerce involves companies doing business with each other, business to consumer (B2C) e-commerce consists of business selling to the public through shopping cart software. Business to business has launched in 1981 and business to consumer has launched in 1984 respectively (Marangoz, Yeşildağ ve Saltık Arıkan, 2012; Diker ve Varol, 2013). Thence an infrastructure for online shopping has been built since 1980’s. Nowadays, online shopping has steadily been increasing. In fact, for the first 51 days of the November-December 2014 holiday season $48.3 billion has been spent online, which is marking a 15-percent increase, compared with last year (Comscore, 2014). According to recent research carried on Forbes magazine lower prices are the main motivating factor to purchase books, consumer electronics, entertainment, health and beauty products, toys, sports, hobby related merchandise, clothing and furniture as the better selection has become the leading impetus to buy food and beverages. Furthermore free shipping has had a strong impact on buying commodity goods as cleaning and paper products (Forbes, 2013).