Privacy and Security in the Age of Electronic Customer Relationship Management

New technologies have fostered a shift from a transaction-based economy through an Electronic Data Interchange (EDI) informational-exchange economy to relationship-based Electronic Commerce (EC) one (Keen 1999.) We have moved from “first order” transactional value exchanges through “secondorder” informational value exchanges to “third-order” relational value exchanges (Widmeyer 2004.) Three important types of EC relationships have been identified: between enterprises and customers (B2C); between enterprises (B2B); and between customers (C2C) (Kalakota 1996.). Additional relationships between Governments (G2G), enterprises (G2B) and customers (G2C) have become more important as EC and e-government have matured and legislation, regulation and oversight have increased (Friel 2004; Reddick 2004); however these are not the focus of this paper. Relational value exchanges have become central to success and competitive advantage in B2C EC and it here that we focus on privacy and security in the age of virtual relationships.