Abstract
Aberrant consumer behaviour costs firms millions of pounds a year, and the Internet has provided young techno-literate consumers with a new medium to exploit businesses. This paper addresses Internet related ethics and describes the ways in which young consumers misdemean on the Internet and their attitudes towards these. Using a sample of 219 generation Y consumers, the study identified 24 aberrant behaviours which grouped into five factors; illegal, questionable activities, hacking related, human Internet trade and downloading. Those perceived as least wrong were; "Downloading movie and music files from the Internet for free". The consequences of these behaviours have implications for educators, consumer policy and marketers.
Article PDF
Similar content being viewed by others
Avoid common mistakes on your manuscript.
References
Albers-Miller, N. D.: 1999, 'Consumer Misbehaviour: Why People buy Illicit Goods', Journal of Consumer Marketing 16(3), 273–287.
Al-Khatib, J. A., S. J. Vitell and M. Y. A. Rawwas: 1997, 'Consumer Ethics: A Cross-cultural Investiga-tion', European Journal of Marketing 31(11/12), 750–767.
Bainbridge, J.: 1999, 'Keeping up with Generation Y', Marketing, Feb 18, 37–3.
Calder, B. J., L. W. Philips and A. Tyhout: 1981, 'Designing Research for Application', Journal of Con-sumer Research 8 (September), 197–207.
Cravatta, M.: 1997, 'Online Adolescents', American Demographics, August, p. 29.
Forester, T. and P. Morrison: 1994, Computer Ethics: Cautionary Tales and Ethical Dilemmas in Computing (MIT Press, Cambridge, MA).
Fullerton, S., K. B. Kerch and H. R. Dodge: 1996, 'Consumer Ethics: An Assessment of Individual Behaviour in the Market Place', Journal of Business Ethics 15, 805–814.
Fullerton, S., D. Taylor and B. C. Gosh: 1997, 'A Cross-cultural Examination of Attitudes Towards Aberrant Consumer Behaviour in the Marketplace: Some Pre-liminary Results from the USA, New Zealand and Singapore', Marketing Intelligence and Planning 15(5), 208–212.
Heckman, J.: 1999, 'Today's Game is Keep-way', Mar-keting News, July 5, 1–3.
Herbig, P., W. Koehler and K. Day: 1993, 'Marketing to the Baby Bust Generation', Journal of Consumer Mar-keting 10(1), 4–9.
Johnston, K. and P. Johal: 1999, 'The Internet as a 'Virtual Cultural Region': Are Extant Cultural Classification Schemes Appropriate?', Internet Research: Electronic Networking Applications and Policy 9(3), 178–186.
Kiesler, C. A., B. E. Collins and N. Miller: 1969, Attitude Change: A Critical Analysis of Theoretical Approaches (John Wiley and Sons Inc., New York).
Kent, R. and M. Lee: 1999, 'Using the Internet for Market Research: A study of private trading on the Internet', Journal of the Market Research Society 41(4), 377–385.
Malhotra, N. K. and G. L. Miller: 1998, 'An Integrated Model for Ethical Decisions in Marketing Research', Journal of Business Ethics 17, 263–280.
Marshall, K. P.: 1999, 'Has Technology Introduced New Ethical Problems?', Journal of Business Ethics 19, 81–90.
Ogburn, W. F.: 1964, On Culture and Social Change (Chicago University Press, Chicago and London).
Rallapalli, K. C., S. J. Vitell, F. A. Wiebe and J. H. Branes: 1994, 'Consumer Ethical Beleifs and Person-ality Traits: An Exploratory Analysis', Journal of Business Ethics 13, 487–495.
Saatchi and Saatchi: 1999, 'Landmark Study Discovers Connexity Kids', Saatchi and Saatchi Press Release, Jan 29.
Schewe, C. D. and S. M. Noble: 2000, 'Market Seg-mentation by Cohorts: The Value and Validity of cohorts in American and Abroad', Journal of Marketing Management 16, 129–142.
Sherif, M. and C. W. Sherif: 1967, 'Attitude as the Individual's Own Categories: The Social Judgement-Involvement Approach to Attitude and Atti-tude Change', in M. Sherif and C. W. Sherif (eds.), Attitude, Ego Involvement and Change (John Wiley and Sons Inc., New York), pp. 105–139.
Strauss, W. and N. Howe: 1997, The Fourth Turning, Broadway Books, New York.
Teenage Research Unlimited: 1998, 'Teenage marketing and Lifestyle Study', Press Release.
Vitell, S. J. and J. A. Muncy: 1992, 'Consumer Ethics: An Investigation of the Ethical Beliefs of the Final Consumer', Journal of Business Ethics 24(4), 297–311.
Walker, Smith and Clurman: 1998, Rocking the Ages: The Yankelovich Report on Generational Marketing (Harper-business, New York).
Wilkes, R. E.: 1978, 'Fraudulent Behaviour by con-sumers', Journal of Marketing, October 67–75.
Author information
Authors and Affiliations
Rights and permissions
About this article
Cite this article
Freestone, O., Mitchell, V. Generation Y Attitudes Towards E-ethics and Internet-related Misbehaviours. Journal of Business Ethics 54, 121–128 (2004). https://doi.org/10.1007/s10551-004-1571-0
Issue Date:
DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s10551-004-1571-0