Introduction

Using the Internet to access online services has become common behavior over the past two decades, and end-users have been accustomed with the creation of personal accounts on various websites proposing information, services or products. Creating online accounts involves the sharing of some level of personal information that is voluntarily delivered to the websites in order to provide identification information or proceed with purchases and goods shipment. Online companies have the ability to correlate users’ profiles with corresponding usage data such as pages visited, propensity to consume, and responsiveness to online advertisements as well as social graphs. In most cases there is no or limited control of the collection of personal data by the end-users and a total lack of visibility on the secondary use made of recorded data by the website owner. While the collection of Internet users’ personal and usage data allows for customized and richer online experiences that benefit end-users, there is a possibility that unsolicited or fraudulent use of personal data ends up with email spam, phishing attempts or organized fraud such as stealing registration details or taking advantage of credit card details.


Trust on the Internet

The combination of fraudulent activity and unsolicited use of personal data experienced by end-users brought legitimate apprehension to use online services, especially when vendors are not famous for doing offline business, have little Internet footprint or don’t have visible good online reputation. Internet users are driven by their personal evaluation of the perceived risk when taking the decision whether to Trust online websites and proceed with registration. Trust in online services has then become a major variable in online consumption in an environment where competition is fierce and revenues affected by potential customers’ confidence in the purchase process. As a consequence, enforcing Trust in their websites has become a vital challenge for any company doing business online and several research studies have addressed the Trust question by decrypting its three main dimensions: identity, security and privacy.


Opportunities and value proposition

While some commercial answers can be found on the market in order to improve Trust level by implementing technical solutions, processes or seals on websites, some aspects of the Trust dimensions are not covered. According to our research results, some areas involving websites’ transparency, privacy or usability Best Practices are not addressed by existing solutions despite their importance in the potential customers’ decision-making process. Our value proposition is to provide a solution that guarantees to end-users that the website they are facing has taken all necessary steps to provide the best possible online experience, without facing any risk of fraud or unsolicited use of personal data. This solution completes the current market offering mainly focusing on technical – i.e. identity, security – aspects of the potential risks end-users are facing. The set of transparency, privacy and usability Best Practices we recommend is referred to as “Webfairness” standards. Benefits will be shared between end-users and companies doing business online by enforcing improved users’ confidence in the purchase process, better customers’ adoption and retention thus better revenues.


Business model

Our opportunity analysis, involving an online questionnaire filled in by more than 150 Internet users and interviews with professionals from the services, security, privacy or regulations industries shed some light on the ideal solution, the necessary steps and organization required to succeed in providing an adequate service offering. The straightforward materialization of the solution is to implement a Webfairness certification program aiming at defining the standards and providing certification processes for websites willing to display a Webfairness seal thus gaining competitive advantage over other uncertified online sellers. Based on existing successful certification programs such as the FairTrade certification as well as results from our survey, we can draw plans on an organization allowing for Webfairness standards definition and certification. In order to ensure the necessary reputation and Internet community support, the standards body needs to be independent and physically separated from the body in charge of applying standards and gaining revenues from the business model. The value creation chain shows that the revenues have to be generated at the certification level, while the standards body can apply for membership, grants or subventions and take the form of an international non-governmental organization. The certification body will generate revenues by selling certificates and the right for certified websites to display a seal testifying their Webfairness compliance and acceptance of the related Best Practices rules.


Strategic analysis

Our analysis combining the use of strategic tools – Porter’s competition analysis, TOWS – in addition to survey results shows that the main key success factors involve the authoritativeness of standards and the standards body itself, a good reputation and perceived independence of the organization. The potential market for Webfairness certification is huge, growing bigger over time, and needs to be addressed in progressive steps involving marketing segmentation and localized international strategy. In order to kick off the activity in a favorable environment, the France region was selected due to Internet retail sites penetration, cultural and physical proximity. The targeted market corresponds to the B2C segment characterized by not too famous Brands selling online products and needing competitive advantage. The strategic plan would then involve the certification of businesses in other regions by addressing more mature Internet regions first before other markets. The size of the market and its worldwide scope forces to foresee the certification of external independent third-party certifying institutions to which parts of the certification would be delegated. In order to address customers churn and improve our customers revenues, we leveraged on research results on customers decision-making process, services marketing and Trust on the Internet. As a result we came out with strong recommendations on the added value and design of our Webfairness product, how to implement adequate marketing campaigns, certification operations and gain the necessary Internet community acceptance as a Trustworthy Brand.


Conclusion, next steps and future research

While all analyzed elements look promising in terms of predictable success, some areas remain grayed out and would require more investigation before drawing final conclusions: - The questionnaire brought results of interest, but not all segments of Internet users are well represented. As long as we don’t have a complete representation of existing segments here may be gaps with expectations and apprehensions from younger population or internet users from other geographies not represented in the array of respondents. - Only few interviews were conducted, and it would have been beneficial to this study to survey potential customers for the Webfairness certification in order to proof-test the concept and refine the offering. - Legal implications are important in this project and we would also need to gain better visibility on all international legislation relating to the certification topic - Finally, a better understanding of possible grants and subventions would help estimating financial expectations. Once all these elements are reviewed, an informed decision can be taken whether to pursue the Webfairness program implementation or not.