China’s Internet Retailers Want You to Trust Them

More than 1,000 suppliers, publishers, and Internet retailers, including Dangdang.com, Microsoft, Aigo, Wyeth, Lock & Lock, Commercial Press, and the People’s Literature Publishing House, have jointly published an “Internet Retailing Honesty Declaration” in China.

Under the declaration, Dangdang.com and its suppliers promise that following the basic principles of integrity, security, and responsibility, they will provide quality products and services to customers. The declaration calls for the authenticity of goods, honest advertising, complete after-sales services, and no leakages of registration information of users.

Li Guoqing, joint president of Dangdang.com, told local media that the honesty declaration is a self-discipline declaration promoted by Dangdang.com along with its suppliers. The company consistently adheres to the principles of no selling of fake goods and no fraud in online shopping, aiming to provide a safe Internet shopping environment for customers in China. (ChinaTechNews)

When companies do this sort of thing in the U.S., it usually means that they are afraid of government intervention. Afraid of being regulated, industries will preemptively engage in a bit of self-regulation (sometimes real, sometimes bullshit). When the government finally decides to check out consumer complaints, industry can respond with “we already took care of this problem, so you needn’t bother.”

China is different. It is doubtful that this move had anything at all to do with government regulations, which will happen here irrespective of some honesty pledge. That being said, I’m sure folks in the government felt a nice warm feeling when they were told about this little PR stunt. Sounds so harmonious, you know.

Here’s the deal. Online retail is growing by leaps and bounds here, but it has expanded so fast that a lot of questionable practices are being tolerated. Consumer complaints are mounting, and the reputations of enterprises are at stake, directly and indirectly. No one wants to see a loss of trust with respect to online transactions – it took a long time for people here to adopt the new tech in the first place.

I don’t think consumers are going to care one way or another about this honesty pledge. Frankly, I don’t see much value to this in the first place, although I assume a PR guy could explain how these things actually help enterprises (keep reading for one possible explanation).

What it does show, however, is that some folks out there in Net Commerce Land are sufficiently concerned about the problems associated with identity theft, counterfeit goods, privacy concerns, and outright fraud. That suggests to me that there is a widespread problem that is, in some ways, getting worse.

It also begs the question whether more firms will actually do something substantive about it. I suspect that at least some of the companies that signed that honesty pledge already have internal measures in place to protect their customers (the pledge is one way to advertise these measures), and they want to make sure that they are not automatically grouped together with the scoundrels out there. Whether more firms will follow suit remains to be seen.

http://www.chinahearsay.com/