The concept of consumer trust and confidence can be addressed from a number of different, sometimes overlapping perspectives. In a legal sense, for example, the phrase “consumer protection” arises in the context of such laws as the Federal Trade Act. Though the legal nuances of consumer protection are important in the context of the Internet (and will be addressed in subsequent white papers), they are not of primary importance here. Instead, the aim of this introductory document is to address the conceptual aspects of consumer trust and confidence, the broad issues most businesspeople and consumers are concerned with when they think of electronic commerce.

In the context of the Internet, consumer confidence and trust encompass a potentially enormous array of concerns. The issues range from privacy and fraud to taxation and protection of children on the Internet. To the extent that each of these issues constitutes its own microcosm of policy issues, each deserves its own distinct and thorough analysis. The Alliance has chosen to focus its first detailed White Papers on four of the aspects of consumer trust and confidence: Fraud, Law Enforcement and Security; Children as Internet Users; Privacy; and Internet Taxation.

We address these issues not because they stand alone as distinctly important categories, but because they are actually tied together by each of the themes below. Based on feedback from policymakers and marketplace developers, we may of course shift the themes or focus of our series as circumstances warrant.
In examining these elements of consumer confidence and trust, certain themes recur: the unintended consequences of government action, predictability for the consumer, consumer choice, consumer education, the role of technological solutions for societal concerns, and the unfortunate tendency to stigmatize the Internet in response to the abuses of a few irresponsible actors.

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