When rumors create chaos in e-commerce

Our work is a modest attempt to first answer why a large number of Internet users are still not active cyber consumers even after knowing the ease and convenience of e-commerce and thereafter the development of our different modeling frameworks in order to provide better understanding for planning and implementation of e-commerce strategies. Various types of malware attacks are the greatest concerns of cyber consumers in doing e-commerce and it may be the main reason behind the huge gap between Internet users and cyber consumers. Another factor equally important and the topic of this research which can also be treated as the centre stage behind this gap is probably rumor that intentionally or accidentally spread via various mediums such as word of mouth or through social networking sites. Since rumor can badly impair morale and confidence of cyber consumers, how to retain cyber consumer's trust in e-commerce and its online financial transactions is a million dollar question. Our rumor based epidemic model for cyber consumerism has four compartments: cyber consumers, confused consumers, escapers and recovered consumers. In this model, the epidemic threshold, can also be termed as individual acceptance threshold, is calculated which may help in evaluating the necessary strategies to control rumor based epidemic in cyber population. It signifies that the rumor based epidemic dies out if the epidemic threshold is less than one and it becomes endemic if the threshold is more than one. Our proposed model is analyzed at rumor-free and rumor-endemic equilibrium points to find the conditions for their local and global stability. Numerical methods and simulation tools are employed to solve and simulate the system of ordinary differential equations developed. Effect of rumor in cyber consumerism is critically analyzed.