International Business | E Business Cases

International Business : The Challenge of Global Competition, 8/e

Donald Ball
Wendell H. McCulloch, California State University Long Beach
Paul L. Frantz, California State University Long Beach
Michael Geringer, California Polytechnic State University
Michael S. Minor, University of Texas Pan American

E Business Cases

Students:

Included here are some internet/case assignments relating to E-Business that you can use to review or that your instructor may give as assignments. Your instructors have been given the answers to these questions and may choose to give them out to you or not.

Privacy on the Internet: The United States versus the European Union

This case is designed to:

Familiarize you with the current legal climate in the United States and in the European Union related to Internet privacy;
Provide you with information about specific differences between privacy standards in the United States and in the European Union; and
Give you insight into how differences in privacy standards could impact online businesses.

Think about the last time you went shopping. What store or stores did you visit? How long did you spend in each store? What product or products did you examine? What product or products did you ultimately purchase? Were you tracked as you went from store to store, with detailed logs compiled about every minute detail of your shopping activity? Chances are that your answer to the last question is an emphatic "NO." What if someone had followed you around, logging every minute detail of your shopping activity? Would you feel that your privacy had been invaded? If you are like most people, your answer is an emphatic "YES." After all, shopping is a personal activity.

Now, think about the last time you "surfed the net." What website or websites did you visit? How long did you spend at each website? What page or pages in the website did you examine? Did you purchase anything online? Were you tracked as you went from website to website, with detailed logs compiled about every minute detail of your "surfing" activity? If you answered an emphatic "NO" to this last question, think again.

Just as the advances in computer and electronic technologies have opened up a world of opportunities for businesses, so too have they opened up a world of opportunities for market researchers. With technologies such as cookies and web bugs, companies are able to amass huge quantities of data about visitors to websites. Then, with sophisticated data mining techniques, these companies are able to turn that data into comprehensive profiles about website visitors.

As consumers around the world become more aware of privacy invasion techniques that companies use to track website behavior and activity, governments are being pressured to react. In the United States, the US Congress has taken the position, at least for the moment, that privacy regulation is better left to the private sector. The European Commission, however, took the position that privacy protection of citizens of the member states of the European Union was a public issue when it issued its Data Protection Directive in 1995.

The Data Protection Directive, which became effective in 1998, treats privacy as a fundamental human right. It requires European member states to adopt national legislation that would ensure that their citizens' rights to privacy are protected. It also requires that companies in non-member states, such as the United States, doing business with companies in the European Union adhere to undefined minimum standards in processing personal data. Personal data is defined broadly to include any information relating to an identified or identifiable natural person. One of the more troubling provisions of the Data Protection Directive forbids the transfer of personal data to non-European Union member countries that do not guarantee adequate protections for personal data. For non-European Union member countries such as the United States, the Data Protection Directive may be a significant nontariff trade barrier.

Case Assignment:

Read "The Effects of the European Privacy Directive on Electronic Commerce" found at http://www.perkinscoie.com/resource/ecomm/europriv.htm . What is the main problem outlined in the article?
What are the six principles cited in "The Effects of the European Privacy Directive on Electronic Commerce" by which the adequacy of a country's data protection may be gauged?
Daimler Chrysler is a German company. General Motors is a US company. Compare and contrast the Privacy Statement of DaimlerChrysler, found at http://www.daimlerchrysler.com/index_g.htm?/privacy_e.htm with the Privacy Statement of General Motors found at http://www.gm.com/privacy/ .