Stuffing, Sniffing, Squatting, and Stalking: Sham Activities in Affiliate Marketing

Businesses engage in technology partnerships to leverage web-based competencies and create competitive advantage. Affiliate marketing (AM) is a business model that enables technological cooperation between small and medium enterprises (SMEs) and affiliates (influential partners who have reach of the intended consumer market). SMEs capitalize on affiliates' consumer reach to achieve global visibility and conduct online trading activities. Based upon mutually agreed commissions, SMEs advertise their goods to consumer communities provided by affiliates. However, AM can be subjected to sham activities that could skew commissions resulting from online sales transactions to bring financial gain to undeserving rogue parties. Using a cross-domain simulation platform of a complete AM network, this study reveals four fraudulent information-seeking behaviors—stuffing, sniffing, squatting, and stalking—that could affect SMEs. These findings will support enterprises in making informed decisions when implementing new AM strategies or in reinvestigating the robustness of existing AM strategies. We further propose some managerial and technical avenues to assist enterprises in safeguarding themselves from activities that could incur considerable losses to their profit margins. The study has further implications for practitioners in establishing a foundation for technology partnerships and sharing of online competencies with partnering firms.