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Within a larger mandate of reviewing the key global trends concerning consumer protection in the electronic commerce (e-commerce) literature, this study aims to study the legal framework concerning e-commerce and consumer protection in the Sultanate of Oman and to analyse the current regulations concerning e-commerce and consumer protection.

This study followed the normative legal research approach and resorted to the desk research process to facilitate content analysis of literature containing consumer protection legislation and regulatory provisions in Oman in particular and the rest of the world in general.

The study reveals that consumer protection initiatives in Oman are well entrenched for offline transactions, but are relatively new and limited for e-commerce. In spite of the promulgation of consumer protection laws, electronic transaction law and cybercrime law, consumer protection measures for e-commerce in Oman do not address a large number of the global concerns necessary to build consumer confidence and trust in the online environment.

There is a dearth of information concerning Oman on this topic in the extant literature. The research also witnessed the lack of empirical data on the issue of consumer protection and e-commerce in Oman that offer a detailed database of consumer complaints and associated outcomes.

The mechanism of consumer protection in electronic transactions is not robust in many countries. Because of the lack of comprehensive and robust legislation, consumers remain vulnerable in the online contractual purchase process. Moving beyond the fragmented legislation, many countries are currently mulling an all-comprehensive e-commerce law, implications of this paper will help the policymakers in identifying the focus areas.

Consumer protection is a burning global issue in this era of consumerism. It is important to build consumer trust, transparency and integrity of transactions to reduce the risk and uncertainties of purchase.

Consumer protection studies conducted in the context of Oman, hitherto, deal more with data protection and dispute resolution mechanisms, and less with legal provisions, regulations and consumer confidence. The study shares newer insights based on a systematic review of legal and business databases. It is the first study of its kind in the context of Oman and the Middle East in general.

This paper aims to consider the question of changes brought to consumers’ trust and security issues by the implementation of the General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR) in electronic commerce.

Online shopping policies in Poland and Ukraine are compared from the perspective of four factors as follows: application of terms of service and privacy policy, usage of online payment systems, presence in price comparison engines and grade of secure sockets layer security certificates. Comparison is conducted within the framework of three research questions (complemented by eight hypotheses) set to reveal whether: policies of personal data protection and server security for online stores in both countries are the same; all online stores in both countries obey the existing e-commerce rules; e-commerce policies in the two countries differ significantly. The sample for analysis contains 40 Polish and 40 Ukrainian online stores, representing four industries, namely, electronics, entertainment, fashion and goods for children.

The research allowed to reveal major differences in the privacy policy of the two countries, caused, mainly, by the absence of GDPR in Ukraine. It also disclosed much stronger cooperation of online stores and price comparison engines in Poland compared to Ukraine. At the same time, research results allow to state that server security in both countries is on the same rather high level and that online stores use transparent and safe methods of online payment.

This research opens a way to other, expanded observations which will include more countries and larger scopes of data. Its main limitation is that GDPR influence is only studied in two countries, not in all countries where it is implemented.

This research contributes from security and trust perspectives by analyzing the situation in two countries as follows: the EU member (Poland) and a non-EU country (Ukraine). The value of exploring the situation of Ukrainian e-commerce consists of understanding how online stores function without implementing the GDPR. Observation of shopbots application allows drawing an important conclusion of the necessity for online stores to cooperate with such services. It was also revealed that consumers’ trust in both countries depends a lot on the payment methods applied by an online store and on the ease of use of these methods.

This article analyses the existing retail and distribution legal framework in which Internet companies operate, focusing on data breaches and other issues of relevance to these companies. In order to identify who should be responsible for the largest share of improving people's quality of life, this study takes into account the perspectives of both consumers and businesses (or service provider). The author states that where there is a high probability of a security or privacy breach and the customer suffers moderate to severe damage, the burden of proof may shift to the corporation. However, the customer's obligation is conditioned by factors such as the customer's risk tolerance, the customer's losses and the efficiency of the security investment.

The author suggests that the decentralized nature of blockchain, information sharing, immutability and smart contracting capabilities have the potential to disrupt established business models and social norms. Challenges related to trust, customs oversight and payments are discussed, as well as the process of creating the framework for electronic commerce. As part of this research, the author has taken into consideration the increasing popularity of Internet shopping.

The author demonstrates that due to the worldwide reach of the internet and the fast advancement of computer technology, the economies of the globe have grown increasingly linked. Even though e-commerce has been growing rapidly in recent years due to innovations in both technology and international retail and distribution forms, it still confronts a number of challenges.

In e-commerce that makes use of blockchain technology, there are significant costs associated with transferring data formats, a lack of consensus and limited emissivity in the flow of law and information. Reduced costs and associated negative externalities would be tremendously beneficial for both private enterprise and forward-thinking public policy.

This paper examines the potential liability concerns that may arise in the context of electronic transactions should a breach of security or privacy occur, as the author shows from a practical standpoint. Computers, mobile devices, tablets, sensors, smart meters and even autos are just some of the many channels via which data may be sent. It is conceivable for data flows in e-commerce, cloud and the Internet of Things to follow a regular pattern. This may endanger the confidentiality or security of the data. These have evolved into a significant barrier that web stores must overcome.

The author argues that resolving disputes related to the processing of electronic transactions is crucial to the growth of e-commerce businesses since customer happiness is directly correlated with business success.

The purpose of this paper is to critically examine the Indian IT Act 2000 and IT (Amendment) Act 2008 in the light of e‐commerce perspective to identify the present status of e‐commerce laws in India.

The paper presents a critical reflection on the current e‐commerce laws in India. The paper is based on the Indian IT Act 2000 and IT (Amendment) Act 2008. The paper presents critical content analysis of various provisions of IT Act in e‐commerce prespective. The paper also highlights legal issues arising from e‐commerce.

There are many important issues which are critical for the success of e‐commerce that have not been covered or properly addressed by IT Act. The paper reveals that the present IT Act is weak on various fronts and in the absence of sound legal framework e‐commerce cannot create a success story in India. Indian Government must appreciate that for safe and secure business environment on cyberspace, a sound legal framework is needed. This paper suggests that there is strong need to introduce separate laws for e‐commerce in India.

The paper identified various loopholes/problems/weakness of existing e‐commerce laws in India. These issues should be addressed by Goverment of India to protect the interests of Indian software industries, BPO sector and other stakeholders.

The issue identified in the paper is somewhat new, timely and interesting, taking into consideration its importance to economic development in emerging economies such as India.

When Peter Steiner published his famous cartoon in The New Yorker in July 1993 with the renowned caption ‘On the Internet, nobody knows you are a dog’, he succeeded in coining within a single cartoon strip the core cause of a multitude of problems that e‐businesses face today. The new communications technologies allow almost anyone to have the ability to deceitfully pass oneself off as someone worthy of trust and reliability for the purpose of personal gain. Conversely, proving or disproving one's trustworthiness to strangers online without specific technologies like public key infrastructure and digital signatures is a near fruitless exercise. While such security technologies are able to resolve identity issues, it has proven to be both difficult and expensive to implement them successfully.

The purpose of this paper is to provide a conceptual overview of the process of unsolicited commercial e‐mail (UCE), propose a typology of UCE, and delineate key stakeholders of UCE, their roles and potential responses through a stakeholder analysis.

Based on the extant literature, this paper provides a conceptualization of the UCE process, delineating specific types of UCE. It uses stakeholder analysis to identify key members in the UCE process and the potential roles to be played by them in combating UCE.

This paper proposes a four‐way typology of the UCE process, identifies key stakeholders, and also mechanisms for tackling UCE.

Given the limited empirical research on this topic, this paper is exploratory in nature, integrating concepts from marketing and e‐commerce research streams. It will provide a solid conceptual foundation for future empirical research on UCE.

This paper will be a useful resource for customers, Internet merchants, policy makers, direct marketing associations, agencies and consumer awareness groups that are working on Internet security, privacy and anti‐spam issues.

This paper addresses an important and timely issue, filling an important gap in current research on e‐mail marketing. It provides conceptual foundations on UCE, and deploys stakeholder analysis to suggest useful guidelines for practice.

Aim of the present monograph is the economic analysis of the role of MNEs regarding globalisation and digital economy and in parallel there is a reference and examination of some legal aspects concerning MNEs, cyberspace and e‐commerce as the means of expression of the digital economy. The whole effort of the author is focused on the examination of various aspects of MNEs and their impact upon globalisation and vice versa and how and if we are moving towards a global digital economy.

Despite grave public concerns over information privacy and ongoing academic explorations of privacy policy, there is a general lack of understanding toward this issue in the legal context in China, the largest e-commerce market in the world. Departing from the extant literature of general discussion in nature, the authors undertook an exploratory study on the efficacy of e-commerce websites' privacy policies in China from the legal perspective.

The authors drew on a qualitative grounded theory approach to identify selective codes relating to the focal issue and established a theoretical framework therefrom. The authors then conducted theoretical integration by linking them to the Theory of Development Blocks and the System Justification Theory.

The research identifies a general distrust of Chinese consumers toward privacy policies and highlights that despite their growing concerns about privacy, the privacy policies are largely ineffective in reflecting legal enforcement, changing their perceptions or influencing purchase behaviors. It also reveals that the current Chinese legislation is unable to fully render consumers' confidence in e-commerce websites' privacy policies effectiveness and privacy protection due to its limited recognition and influences among them.

The research has multiple ramifications. The authors empirically confirmed a mismatch between customers' perception of privacy policies and their actual behaviors and then theoretically explained the seemingly conflicting scenario in the context of development block of legal enforcement and system justification. The authors theorized the absence of the legal enforcement in privacy policies to supplement the legal perspective to the literature. The research further leads us to suggest that the time has come to update and strongly enforce privacy regulation in China to fuel the further development of e-commerce sector in practice.

The purpose of this paper is to understand the integrated impact of the application of protection measures against identity theft on consumers’ synergistic perception of trust, the cost of products/services and operational performance (OP) – all of which in turn is postulated to contribute to purchase intention (PI) when shopping online.

In order to accomplish the specified aim, this study first conducted an experiment by involving the students from a university in Bangladesh. Then a survey was conducted to capture their opinion based on the previous experiment.

The study identified that in e-commerce, OP and trust have potential impact on pursuing consumers’ PI. Traditionally, price is always an issue in marketing; however, for e-commerce, this issue does not have direct impact on PI.

The main limitation of this study is that a less established e-commerce example was utilized to conduct the experiment and survey for validating the model. Also, the study was conducted only in the context of Bangladesh and a student sample was utilized. Future studies can test the model in different contexts (particularly to verify the impact of privacy) by utilizing data from consumers.

This study has resolved a controversial issue by generating clear guidelines that the overall conjoint effect of OP, trust, and price on PI is neither negative nor neutral. Synergistically, the application of these controlling tools of identity theft can substantially enhance consumers’ trust, which is the single most predictor to pursue consumer PI.

This study has provided in-depth insight into the impact of different controlling measures in e-commerce PI. Practitioners have potential learning from this study that if consumers find the application of different controlling mechanisms against cybercrimes, particularly identity theft, enhancing the reliability, authenticity and security of transactions in this virtual medium, they do not mind paying a higher price. Such insights have not been provided by existing studies on this topic. Developing trust on e-commerce purchase is the driving force, not the price.