As e-commerce businesses vie to generate traffic to their Web sites, the bigger challenge is how to retain that traffic. In lieu of real earnings by which to gauge the value of public Internet companies, investors are betting that sites with extraordinarily high numbers of registered users will catalyze the growth of the new Internet economy. Building trust and addressing privacy may be perceived as nebulous. But in 1998, Studio Archetype and Cheskin Research attempted to quantify the trust issue by proposing a hierarchy of the components that contribute to trust. Not surprisingly, the study found that Web privacy and security topped consumer fears, and that these fears can have a resounding impact on the ability of a Web site to build a trusting relationship with a potential online customer.
Invasion of privacy is a fear that emanates from a variety of sources.
First, the experience of shopping online is fundamentally different than the experience in the brick and mortar world. In stark contrast, Web sites have the ability to identify consumers from the moment they log on. The advent of new technologies such as personalization and online profiling make this fact all too clear to the consumer, sometimes uncomfortably so. Consumer fear of the Web can also be traced to the rash of scare-oriented media coverage. A recent study by Jupiter Communications linked the level of consumer fear of privacy invasion to the rise in CNET coverage of the issue.