Dropshipping: The e-commerce success and the ethics behind its use as a business model.
In this study there are three main areas covered in the literature review: a back story to the business model, the ethical issues about it and finally the advertising methods used. The objective is to help understand what research is currently published surrounding the ethics of this business model. The next section is methodology where the planning for the research is explained. The aim of this section is to understand what needs to be asked of the participants to answer the research questions (see below). Finally, the results are analyzed to understand the attitudes towards dropshipping, the products sold, and the advertising methods used. The objective of the analysis is to try and answer the research questions asked in the methodology.
Understand the feelings of consumers who buy branded goods and their attitude towards drop-shipped alternatives. The dataset showed that this is an issue with dropshipping companies. All age groups found that dropshipping is a negative way of running a business using replica products. It is shown that, in general, people would instead save and buy the branded product as they are sure of its quality and its ethically produced.
To investigate consumers attitudes towards influencers that legitimise the drop shipping sales channel. This research has helped answer the questions set out at the beginning of the project. From this research, it can be understood that the younger generations respond better to influencers advertising genuine branded products on their social media. However, the older generations in the data set felt a lower level of trust with influencers. These conclusions are supported by (Cartwright, 2016) who talks about the issue of dropshipping, (Coates, et al., 2019) this research helps to conclude the attitudes around influencers. A lot of people understand how influential they can be specifically towards younger people. The research from (Francisco J. Martínez-López, 2020) linked back to the attitudes of consumers it helps to see that participants felt that content is forced, and this could be a reason why younger generations are starting to loose trust in influencers.
To compare the differences between people's attitudes towards the influencers that promote fake, cloned or replica products and the organisation's that sell them. The data also showed that there is a genuine negative attitude towards influencers advertising dropshipped fake or replica products. Their advertisements legitimise these products as good value, and the way they have not researched the products they promote was the main issue from the data set. The data set also felt that the companies that sell them are unethical as they are copying good ideas. This attitude was generally from older generations who felt very strongly at protecting the smaller or innovative businesses.
To assess if the consumer's perceptions of drop shipping sales methods change once they know how this business model works. In general, the perceptions of dropshipping are negative. Participants understood the issues surrounding how some exploit the business model to ship cheap products directly to consumers to create a profit. The participants saw this as an issue, specifically the older generations. Although some of the data set showed people said they did buy these kinds of products such as printer ink. Respondents wanted to ensure that social media advertising is being regulated and the products sold to be ethically obeying patent and safety laws. This conclusion supports (Bian & Veloutsou, 2007) (Sun, et al., 2020) research and shows that consumers attitudes to dropshipped products is low. However, although respondents believe this business model is unethical some are still happy to buy these kinds of products such as printer ink. But still believe that this kind of business model is unethical as well as their advertising methods.
To ask if they believe this kind of business deserves the kind of success these companies achieve. From the data set we can see that all generations would rather save for a branded product and support genuine innovative businesses. The main issues the data set have with the success of these business is how smaller companies inventing these products are being taken advantage of such as the hover board for example from (Sun, et al., 2020).