A study of the impacts of unethical online business towards consumers / Muhammad Alif Akmal Shaedull

Nowadays, online business has become a trend in customer and consumer. It facilitate the consumer to negotiate with seller for buying a product. Many platforms of online business had been introduced such as Lazada, Mudah.my, Shopee, and social media such as Whatsapp, Instagram, Facebook, and so on. But, there are some issues a rise because some online seller is not applied good business ethic to consumers. Annual report of the National Consumer Complaints Centre (NCCC) in 2016 stated complaints received from consumers are 48, 563 and increasing than the previous year. The complaints are increasing because authority bodies failed to find a solution that can satisfy consumers. According to Utusan Online (2015), President of Federation of Malaysian Consumers Associations (FOMCA), Professor Datuk Dr. N. Marimuthu said that consumers often being a victim of online business because they were not aware and check out either the business is registered or not under the Companies Commission of Malaysia (SSM). Thus, this research aim to identify the risk shopping in online business. Next, this research aim to analyses the impacts of unethical online business towards consumers. Lastly, this research aim to suggest a solution towards unethical in online business. The research design for this research is qualitative research. This research revealed that the risk shopping in online business are long time to receive the goods and services, the shipping cost is expensive, the goods and services is different as in the picture, no refund, cannot test the goods and services before buying, scammer and the goods is broken. Next, the impacts of unethical online business towards consumers are the consumer will no longer trust online seller, the consumer will feel uncomfortable with dealing with online seller, poor consumer will be oppressed and consumer personal information is stolen. Lastly, the solution towards unethical in online business are public awareness. Authority body such Ministry of Domestic Trade and Consumer Affairs had released some guidelines for consumer to protect consumer from unethical online seller.