Utility of Behavioral Economics in E-Commerce

While using any of the online platforms or search engines if we look or have been lured for specific categories of information or product we end up receiving multiple advertisements, offers relating to similar products or information is a very common experience of almost every technologically literate person.Through modifying the content or choices exposed to the consumers, the e-commerce platforms globally are promoting materialistic behavior among the population.There have been various studies depicting the impact of Nudges meaning slight change in circumstances to influence decisions on human decision making and the present study purports to explore the dimension of human behavior in e-commerce platforms with reference to Nudge theory.The human tendency of easily trusting and sharing personal information leads social engineering strategies to persuade humans towards vulnerable instances, such as use of technique to persuade the target individuals in performing specific tasks or to reveal some information which is not necessarily legitimate for certain gains.Thus, the present paper analyzes the impact and utility of behavioral economics and social engineering in e-commerce and legal issues arising out of the same.The paper starts with the description and definitions of Behavioral economics, social engineering with reference to E-commerce and moves towards their utility, impact over choices of consumers moving forward with the statistics and analysis of the literature available.The present paper provides analysis of Social engineering, Nudge theory and Principles of persuasion to influence human behavior on e-commerce platforms.