Kirsty Newman 20:21, 2 Sep 2004 (EST)
Consumers may get some risks when they are doing online shopping. Especially, consumer’s personal information, such as credit card number, passport number may steal by others for some illegal uses, also, consumers may buy some fraud product from the online market. However, e-commerce growing up quickly and it is affecting the world economy, organization or government must find some way to support and protect online consumers to keep do e-commerce and increase the value of space-market.
E-bay is a good example of online consumer advocacy, which is the biggest international online auctioneer. E-bay set some policies to protect and support consumers shop in online space, registered and make the trading histories public also can give online consumers confidence to shop online.
Not only the online trading company will set some policies to support consumer shop online, but also government will become an online consumer advocacy and help cyberspace become a safe place for consumers to do shopping.
Also, there are online many consumer advocacy groups provide information to online consumers, which information is very useful for consumers to learn how to protect themselves when they are doing online shopping.
“Consumer Union" is a good example of consumers advocacy, it is an independent nonprofit organization serving only consumers, provides product safety information, consumer ratings for many items.
“Consumer Search" is a website for consumers to research purchase decisions, and compiles hundreds of reviews for many products, and then analyses the reviews and ranks them according to the credibility of who wrote them.
Also, Consumer World provides product reviews, and some consumer’s resources, that help consumers understand more about the products.
"National Consumers League" also is a private, nonprofit advocacy group, it is representing consumers on marketplace.
Those consumer advocacy groups provide a lot of information to online consumers, if online consumers go to check the information before do online shopping, the fraud in the online shopping process must be reduce.
Consumer Advocacy Links(2004) [Online] Available: http://www.scils.rutgers.edu/~favretto/consumer.html [Accessed 3 August 2004]
Consumer Search(2004) [Online] Available: http://www.consumersearch.com/xp6/ConsumerSearch/home.xml
Consumers Union.org (2004) [Online] Available: http://www.consumer.org/
eBay Inc, Tiffany & Co “Leaders: Psst, wanna buy a cheap bracelet?; E-commerce,� The Economist. London, vol.372, Iss.8382, page.13, retrieved July 3, 2004, from Link.
The National Consumers League (2004) [Online] Available: http://www.nclnet.org/ [Accessed 26 October 2004]
Next sub-topic--International Operation of E-commerce
Leung Sum Yee 17:44, 27 Oct 2004 (EST)
E-commerce_and_the_Law
