Identity theft as a threat to CRM and e-commerce
Alan David Smith · Electronic Government an International Journal · 2005
Customer loyalty, a main component of customer relation management, is a tool used by companies to become profitable online. However, is currently under attack by the exponentially growing menace of identity thieves. In the past few years, identity theft has cost US consumers and businesses over $35 billion dollars. Identity theft affects everyone from businesses to consumers to government agencies. Through conceptual modelling and a variety of statistical techniques, including factor analysis and principal-components analysis, a series of hypotheses was tested on a sample of 107 working professionals in the metropolitan sector of Pittsburgh, PA. Six independent variable constructs, in order of decreasing variance explained or importance included Passwords and Security, Online Invasion, Security Priorities, Poor Experiences, Anti-Virus Protection and Employment Experience. A number of results points to the fact that individual customers must bear the majority of the burden to develop prevention strategies when dealing with identity thieves.