Legal, Ethical, and Regulatory Issues: Write a paper that describes the legal, ethical, and regulatory issues important in eBusiness for Continental Airlines

Legal, Ethical, and Regulatory Issues for Continental Airlines

Legal, Ethical, and Regulatory Issues: Write around 400 to 600 words paper that describes the legal, ethical, and regulatory issues important in e Business for Continental Airlines. Also, describe how Continental Airlines site handles security, confidentiality, and International issues. Cite at least 1 reference.

E- Business
E-business is a strategy, which uses technology to achieve business goals. It is basically an evolution in the way companies interact. It provides information to facilitate delivery of goods and services and supports change initiatives and reinforce business process re-engineering. It improves external business relationship also.

Issue of ethics, legal and other regulations

There has been tremendous impact of e-Business on the Airlines. The information is exchanged much more quickly than any other thing which is helping the organizations to make more quick and accurate decisions. E business has removed geographical and time restrictions for the organizations. It also helps in following:
? Recording and analyzing strategic management records : processing these strategic management records into industry trends reports, market share reports, mission statements, and portfolio models
? It also actively uses electronic ticketing (e-ticketing) which involves generating an electronic record of ticket details, keeping status of the ticket updated at every stage as the passenger uses each of the flight coupon, on post flight reconcile payments , process refunds , reissues or to generate management reports. E-ticketing has grown rapidly since its inception in 1997, mainly due to its cost saving feature
for airlines. It is a very good example of marketing in digital age as it involves using of "electronic communication to conduct business among enterprises and its customers.
It includes catering to a group or target consumer in order to expose, sell, market. etc goods or services to the public. E-ticketing technology for airlines will emerge as a major cost saving technology for airlines, promising to save $3 billion per year. More savings are expected from saving in travel agency commissions, which are possible only due paperless transactions. Further, e-ticketing will result in quicker realization
of payments, shorter working capital cycle, faster accounting systems for reporting revenues. North America is leading region in implementing eticketing technology , due to spread of internet, online travel portals and the airlines' emphasis on developing own websites. Airlines in USA will continue to hasten the pace of global interlining solutions of e-ticketing, after experiencing its cost benefits on online carriage.
? Use of all the above to implement and control the businesses.
Thus internet environment is dynamic and growing and it is facing lot of ethical, legal and regulatory issues. There may be many in future.
There are issues of diverse cultures and languages; legal and regulatory differences; localization, technology and infrastructure. Moreover the markets are flooded with various products. Various options are available for end customers to switch loyalties. Thus the survival is at stake.

Another issue is of privacy and security. The most important challenge that e-commerce face is the ability to guarantee customers' privacy and safety when doing transactions online such as booking tickets. Thus the major worries encountered in electronic commerce transactions are that of data protection, data authenticity and taxation.
Another worry is to manage cultural barriers and differences of beliefs, ideas, norms and values that shape peoples' lives. The challenge is to find the common ground between cultures on which to build and market their products.
The ethical processes of providing safe and secure medium of enabling the transactions are key to the success of business website. The other Security Issues such as Firewalls, viruses, hacking, site certificates, encryption and privacy policies are the major areas of concern which are holding corporations back from entering the digital world too deeply as it makes them more vulnerable to corruption and breakdown. For the most part, the Internet is unregulated. However, the government is now formulating laws and regulations to prevent illegal activities and fraud on the internet. There are security concerns, applicable law, site policies, conditions of use, and disclaimers of warranties and limitations of liabilities for both types of websites.

Thus Legal, ethical and regulatory issues must be carefully considered and aligned strongly with business vision and values to achieve success in business today.
Ethics are based on universal values that do not change irrespective of the fact if business is being conducted with a person or with a company. Ethical framework for both the sites remains almost the same. Honesty, integrity, and trustworthiness cross all aspects of and are the keys to doing business successfully on the Web. This will go a long way in building customer loyalty.
As discussed above it has to comply with legal rules, they must not be used for any purpose that is unlawful or prohibited by the terms, conditions, and notices of the local laws. But in case of B2C (as in case of Continental), websites has more legal responsibilities as numerous customers provide details of important personal information and credit cards over the website to facilitate the purchase of goods and services.
Issues such as intellectual property, competition find more ground in B2B sites whereas consumer protection, access, confidentiality, sustainability, reliability are more important in B2C site.
http://pwebs.net/marketing/ethics/articles/internetethics.htm as retrieved on 14 Sep 2006 10:26:59 GMT.

Regulatory Issues-

All the government rules and regulation over conducting and contracting business must be incorporated. B2C are heavily regulated to protect consumers. Appropriate disclaimers of warranties and limitations, rules, mode of conducting business, policies must be explained in accordance with established regulations

Steps taken by Continental Airlines
It is taking lot of steps for protecting the privacy of the user of its website. It has the privacy policy committed to protect the interests of the users.
http://www.continental.com/web/en-US/content/privacy.aspx?SID=7B2588DA541042768C75C8E59AAD99FA
Moreover according to its website it participates in the "Council of Better Business Bureau's BBBOnLine® Privacy Program and is committed to the program's strict requirements regarding the treatment of personal information and to have that commitment verified by BBBOnLine."
Continental also adheres to the Safe Harbors Principles issued by the U.S. Department of Commerce. It is also adhering to the security guidelines when the passenger or tourists books e tickets.