Drive to boost consumer
confidence in e-business
Paris, 11
October 1999 -- Leading
world business organizations today issued an updated Global Action Plan for
Electronic Commerce outlining extensive efforts by the private sector to improve
consumer confidence in e-business through voluntary self-regulation.
The new plan was made public
at a Forum on Electronic Commerce called by the Organization for Economic Cooperation
and Development (OECD) to meet a deadline accepted by the business groups at
an OECD ministerial meeting on electronic commerce in Ottawa in October last
year.
The action plan urges governments
to exercise self restraint in their approach to Internet regulation, intervening
only where it is essential and concentrating instead on promoting a stable,
international legal environment, ensuring that competition is fair and that
electronic contracts can be enforced.
The first Global Action
Plan said business was stepping up investment in self-regulatory mechanisms
so that consumers could feel safe on the information highway. Since then it
has become widely accepted that g
aining market share in cyberspace will depend
on winning consumer confidence.
The new e-commerce action
plan shows that in the last 12 months business has tripled efforts to guarantee
transparency and legal certainty through new rules and technologies, investing
billions of dollars in self-regulation. The new action plan lists almost 60
initiatives ranging from online databases providing instant information on the
trustworthiness of web traders to so-called trustmark schemes that force businesses
to comply with stringent rules of good practice.
The founding members of
the Alliance for Global Business (AGB), which developed the second edition of
the global action plan, include the International Chamber of Commerce (ICC),
the World Information Technology and Services Alliance (WITSA), the International
Telecommunications User Group (INTUG) and the Business and Industry Advisory
Committee to the OECD (BIAC).
Despite recent surveys showing
that there is still much work to be done in boosting consumer confidence, senior
business executives believe the right message is getting through. Voluntary
schemes, they say, are a strength not a weakness, as competition forces the
market to adopt the most effective solutions which are also best for consumers.
As Dick Brown, Chairman and CEO of EDS, commented: "Businesses must make consumer
confidence their highest priority. When we keep our eye on the needs of our
customers, we always win, and so do customers!"
"The Internet and e-commerce
may be two of the greatest assets to bring social and economic prosperity in
the next millennium", observed Michio Naruto, Vice-Chairman of Fujitsu Limited.
"The Global Action Plan demonstrates how the Internet and electronic commerce
can benefit all. It also shows that the private sector is keen to continue to
work with governments to ensure a stable and predictable environment for the
digital economy."
Yoshihiro Fujii, Chairman
of Hitachi Zosen Corp and the e-commerce working group of the Japanese employers'
organization Keidanren, said that the action plan has unprecedented support
as a business consensus document because it reflects extensive research conducted
in hundreds of specialized groups. "It dovetails very nicely with a critical
path to electronic commerce identified by Japanese business," said Mr Fujii.
"With business investing
billions of dollars in building trust in the market, we hope that governments
will avoid making rigid one-size-fits-all choices on issues like whose country's
courts can decide a conflict between a business and a consumer and whose laws
apply," said Maria Livanos Cattaui, ICC Secretary General.
Some of the innovative schemes
have already proved highly successful. One scheme in the US, the Online Privacy
Alliance reports that it has increased the posting of privacy policies on websites
from 14% in 1998 to 60% in 1999, with the top 100 most popular sites increasing
from 71% to 94.4%, all in the space of one year.
The recommendations of the
1999 Global Action Plan for Electronic Commerce are supported by a large number
of associations representing hundreds of thousands of businesses from all sectors.
These include the World Association of Newspapers (WAN), the World Economic
Forum (WEF), the World Federation of Advertisers (WFA), and the International
Air Transport Association (IATA).
1999
Global Action Plan for Electronic Commerce
For more information on
the Global Action Plan, contact:
Christiaan van der Valk
Deputy Director of Policy and Business Practices Manager - Telecoms & E-commerce
Tel. 33-1-49532913 Fax 33-1-49532859
E-mail: Click here to send a mail