Providing an Anti-Marketing Model to Prevent Criminal Behaviors in Online and Digital Businesses

Objective: Nowadays, the development of the digital space has increased deceptive practices and unconventional behavior in most areas of business. In this regard, with the development of the digital space, poisonous channels, including life, financial and behavioral risks, have plagued people and businesses. As we can see, today the digital space is known as the main form of marketing, so that without it, marketing has a big flaw. On the other hand, the existence of this vast space has made room for some profit-seeking people and actually use this space for fraud and unethical practices in business. For this reason, in order to prevent criminal behavior in the field of marketing, this study has tried to provide an anti-marketing model to prevent criminal behaviors in online businesses, which has not received the attention of researchers in domestic and foreign studies, and this study can solve the gaps available and provide practical solutions in this field to help.



Methodology: This research is one of the types of qualitative, applied and exploratory studies. The statistical population of the research included specialists and experts in the field of marketing, especially digital marketing, as well as the owners of reputable online businesses. Therefore, in order to collect relevant and appropriate data and information, it was tried to use indicators for sample selection that experts have a close relationship and sufficient experience with the subject under investigation. Also, data collection has been done using purposeful sampling and semi-structured interviews. It should be noted that in this study, the opinions of 16 experts were used to identify factors and contents related to the research topic. On the other hand, this study has identified categories that have an effect on the subject of the research with the Grounded theory approach.



Findings: According to the contents obtained in the interview section, 238 primary codes, 106 secondary codes and 26 sub-categories have been identified for 6 main categories, i.e. causal categories, intervening factors, contextual factors, central phenomenon, strategies and consequences. Finally, using the ATLAS.ti software, the anti-marketing model was extracted to prevent criminal behaviors in the online business environment.



Conclusion: Based on the findings, it can be stated that providing an anti-marketing model to prevent criminal behavior in online and digital businesses is a primary model in this field that has not been noticed by researchers in previous studies and helps to improve the subject literature. Finally, identifying the anti-marketing model to prevent criminal behavior in the online and digital business space has different and positive main consequences that were identified by the content of the interviews. These consequences include prohibiting criminal behavior, strengthening digital marketing, promoting moral spirituality online, strengthening the rule of law of online acquisition, strengthening the culture of the online environment, and strengthening the digital community. On the other hand, the findings of the present study provide suggestions to prevent criminal behaviors in the online and digital business environment.