Information Privacy and Online Behaviors

Abstract

This study explores several key potential influences of privacy concerns on consumers' attitudes toward websites. Using a sample of 221 subjects, it was found that privacy concerns could decrease the likelihood of purchasing online. This finding highlights the importance of privacy concerns and contributes to the understanding of Internet marketing in that the early literature incompletely addresses the issue of consumer privacy empirically, which represents a potential threat to the growth of e-commerce. Thus, online marketers should be careful not to abuse (e.g., distribute it without permission) the personal information of consumers. In sum, it is advised that online marketers assure the public that consumer information will not be tracked and traded without the individual consumer's knowledge or consent.     

To Share and Protect: Using Regulatory Focus Theory to Examine the Privacy Paradox of Consumers' Social Media Engagement and Online Privacy Protection Behaviors

Consumers' personal information often informs retailers' marketing efforts in terms of creating value in the online marketplace. This study examines four factors related to consumers' social media engagement and online privacy protection behaviors. Regulatory focus, social exchange, and marketing relationship theories explain the online consumer personal information share-and-protect model developed. Consumers aged 18–64 years across the United States participated in this survey research. The results suggest that while personal privacy violation experience and perceived secondary control of one's personal information are influential antecedents, privacy concerns and trust in social media websites mediate each of these respectively. The findings suggest that promotion- and prevention-related behaviors regarding personal information align with the orientation of the antecedents, indicating that regulatory focus theory shows promise for examining the privacy paradox. We conclude by developing a matrix that integrates regulatory focus and social exchange theories to guide future research.     

Permission Marketing and Privacy Concerns — Why Do Customers (Not) Grant Permissions?

Little is known about the influence of motivators that drive consumers to grant permission to be contacted via personalized communication. In this study, a framework is developed to investigate the effect of select drivers of consumers granting permission to receive personalized messages. The authors distinguish between drivers related to benefit and cost to the consumers. They identify the influence of perceived personal relevance, entertainment, and consumer information control as well as monetary incentives and lottery participation as benefit-related factors. Cost-related factors entail the registration process, privacy concerns, and perceived intrusiveness. The authors find that, except for monetary incentives and lottery participation, the identified drivers significantly influence consumers' decision to grant permission. The strong negative influence of privacy concerns on the probability of granting permission can be lessened by two benefit-related factors, namely message content with entertainment value or personal relevance for the consumer. The study helps to improve firm measures aimed at getting more permissions — granted by customers for interactive campaigns.     

Antecedents of consumer attitudes toward mobile marketing: A comparative study of youth markets in the United States and China

The purpose of this study is to examine factors influencing consumers' attitudes toward mobile marketing across two major markets—the United States and China. Drawing upon the technology acceptance model (TAM), the theory of reasoned action (TRA), and the perceived characteristics of innovations theory (PCI), we develop and test a conceptual model examining the joint influences of TAM constructs (perceived ease of use and perceived usefulness) and individual characteristics (personal attachment, innovativeness, risk avoidance, and privacy concern) and on consumer attitudes toward mobile marketing practices. Focusing on youth consumers, we empirically test the model using data collected in an established (United States) and an emerging market (China). Findings across these two markets reflect cross‐market similarities and differences related to consumers' attitudes toward mobile marketing. © 2012 Wiley Periodicals, Inc.     

Information Sensitivity Typology: Mapping the Degree and Type of Risk Consumers Perceive in Personal Data Sharing

Surveys show significant public concern regarding information privacy. To better understand how consumer concerns vary by type of personal data, the authors created a typology of information types based on perceived associated risks. In a national consumer survey, 52 information types were analyzed along four perceived risk categories (physical, psychological, monetary, and social), consumers' overall sensitivity regarding the information, and their willingness to provide it. This resulted in six highly distinctive clusters—Basic Demographics, Personal Preferences, Contact Information, Community Interaction, Financial Information, and Secure Identifiers—organized around similarities in perceived risk profile. Additionally, consumer segmentation analysis shows rank order of cluster risk perceptions to be stable, even when perceived magnitude and overall risk propensities change by segment. This research advances the conversation from an outdated PII/non‐PII framework to a more meaningful, consumer‐based understanding of the perceived risks associated with different types of personal information.     

How does ad relevance affect consumers' attitudes toward personalized advertisements and social media platforms? The role of information co-ownership,vulnerability, and privacy cynicism

Consumers' responses to the use of their personal data for personalized advertising by platform providers are paradoxical. Drawing from psychological ownership theory and the collective information boundary, this study examines how the social relevance and personal relevance of ads impact consumers' attitudes toward advertisements and social media platforms. Basing on 350 responses, we confirm that perceptions of information co-ownership and feelings of vulnerability play a serial mediating role in the positive relationship between ad relevance and consumer attitudes. Specifically, ad relevance increases consumers' perceptions of social media platforms as co-owners of their personal information, which in turn reduces feelings of vulnerability and improves their attitudes toward personalized advertisements and social media platforms. Privacy cynicism negatively moderates the indirect effects of information co-ownership perceptions on two attitude variables mediated through feelings of vulnerability. Our research findings provide a new perspective on the personalization–privacy paradox and offer platform providers new insights into improving their personalized advertising performance and user–platform relationships.     

Comfort in brick and mortar shopping experiences: Examining antecedents and consequences of comfortable retail experiences

This paper explores the comfort construct in brick and mortar retail settings. As a psychological construct, consumer comfort reflects a sense of ease and peace of mind during a shopping experience. Previous research suggests comfort carries a number of positive consequences for managers, such as strengthening customer relationships and increasing customer satisfaction (Gaur and Xu, 2009). However, these studies take a more interpersonal relationship theory approach and have not considered the impact of non-social aspects of retail environments on consumers' comfort. Moreover, these extant studies have not considered how comfortable environments create value for consumers. Consequently, this study examines how atmospheric elements contribute to creating consumer comfort, and how comfort impacts consumers' perceptions of shopping value. Findings from survey data demonstrate that not all atmospheric elements influence consumers' comfort levels. Moreover, comfortable environments were found to increase both utilitarian value and hedonic value. The implications of the findings for academics and managers are discussed.     

Privacy threats with retail technologies: A consumer perspective

This paper focuses on new retail technologies that acquire information from consumers, advancing that such devices represent privacy management concerns. Specifically, we propose that privacy perceptions in a retail environment are driven by retailer- and technology-related factors as well as consumers' personality traits. By running a moderated serial mediation analysis, we address the technologies' fairness and hedonism as antecedents of consumer privacy perceptions, technology acceptance and perceived value, and account for consumers' trust in the retailer. We find that privacy perceptions are directly affected by distributive fairness, while the technology's hedonism affects acceptance. Further, the effects extend to patronage intention and word-of-mouth.     

Understanding consumers’ decisions to adopt technology-enabled transformative services

This study extends understanding of consumers' decisions to adopt transformative services delivered via technology. It incorporates competitive effects into the model of goal-directed behavior which, in keeping with the majority of consumer decision making models, neglects to explicitly account for competition. A goal-level operationalization of competition, incorporating both direct and indirect competition, is proposed. A national web-based survey collected data from 431 respondents about their decisions to adopt mental health services delivered via mobile phone. The findings show that the extent to which consumers perceived using these transformative services to be more instrumental to achieving their goals than competition had the greatest impact on their adoption decisions. This finding builds on the limited empirical evidence for the inclusion of competitive effects to more fully explain consumers' decisions to adopt technology-based and other services. It also provides support for a broader operationalization of competition with respect to consumers' personal goals.     

Will artificial intelligence replace human customer service? The impact of communication quality and privacy risks on adoption intention

In the digital environment, chatbots as customer service agents assist consumers in decision making. Based on the computers-are-social-actors paradigm, this study examines the perceived differences in communication quality and privacy risks between different service agents and their impact on consumers' adoption intention, and investigates whether these perceived differences might depend on differences in the user's human interaction need. A series of five scenario-based experiments were carried out to collect data and test hypotheses. It was discovered that: different types of service agents directly affect consumers' adoption intention; perceived communication quality and privacy risk mediate the effect of service agent type on adoption intention; the effects of service agent type on perceived accuracy, communicative competence, and privacy risk are moderated by the need for human interaction. The findings of this study provide important insights into the rational use of human−computer interacation in e-commerce.     

Impact of personalization and privacy concerns on information disclosure and pricing

Advances in IT have enabled some firms to offer personalized products according to the private information disclosed by consumers, while others are still offering standardized products, which brings about asymmetric competition. For consumers, disclosing private information for personalized products leads to reduced misfit cost as well as privacy loss. To illuminate the impact of consumers' trade-off between the benefit of information disclosure and the associated privacy concerns on firms' asymmetric price competition, we consider a setting where only one firm is capable of product personalization based on consumers' personal information. The capable firm makes a profit from selling the product and monetizing consumers' information. We demonstrate that as the capable firm becomes more adept at personalization, he may raise or lower the price depending on his profit foci, and an improvement in his capability does not always guarantee a higher profit. Counterintuitively, an increase in the unit misfit cost (i.e., greater product differentiation) can, under certain circumstances, intensity price competition, making both firms worse off and leading to higher consumer surplus. We also show that when consumers are more privacy-concerned, there exists an indirect effect that weakens the impact of an increase in price on the monetization of consumers’ information, and hence price competition can be mitigated and both firms can be better off. Furthermore, we demonstrate that product personalization with misfit-reducing effect always increases consumer surplus under the asymmetric competition. Our findings provide firms and policy-makers with great managerial insights.     

Consumer privacy and the future of data-based innovation and marketing

Digitization makes it easier for firms to build their innovation and marketing efforts around consumers' personal data. In this research, we employ a privacy perspective based on contextual integrity to examine how such practices can trigger privacy concerns. We propose that small entrepreneurial firms are often at a particular disadvantage compared to large incumbent firms. At the same time, we also highlight that there are several strategies firms can use to mitigate privacy concerns and that in some circumstances, privacy concerns may also exert positive effects on data-driven marketing by stimulating privacy innovation and providing a source of competitive advantage.     

Beyond concern: socio-demographic and attitudinal influences on privacy and disclosure choices

ABSTRACT

The co-option of consumers as unwilling agents in their own surveillance has enabled significant abuses of consumer privacy. Previous studies have largely used privacy concern as a proxy for overall privacy attitudes. In this study, we implement a choice experiment in combination with measures adapted from Communication Privacy Management theory to enable a broader exploration of the influences of privacy attitudes by contextualising privacy as a negotiation about accessibility over contextual boundaries. Key findings suggest individuals’ social media disclosure decisions are influenced at least in part by their privacy attitudes, particularly with respect to information categories which may cue other personal information. Findings are also presented on consumers’ willingness to pay for privacy, with implications for alternative revenue streams not built on consumer surveillance.     

Impact of privacy concerns on resistance to smart services: does the ‘Big Brother effect’ matter?

ABSTRACT

The aim of this study is to provide a better understanding of the factors that explain consumer resistance to smart services from a privacy perspective. To this end, an exploratory qualitative study and a quantitative study were carried out. 653 French consumers answered an online questionnaire regarding smart services in the banking sector. Structural equation modelling was used to test the conceptual model. The findings show that information privacy, the unauthorised secondary use of personal information and perceived intrusion have an impact on consumer resistance to smart services. Moreover, our research highlights the major role of the ‘Big Brother effect’ as an antecedent to these various privacy concerns.     

The right to be heard and to be understood: a conceptual framework for consumer protection in emerging economies

In many emerging economies and developing countries, comprising consumers from different cultures and with varying degrees of sophistication (knowledge and skill) concerning consumer protection, the promotion of consumers' rights to develop a consumer‐oriented culture remains a very big challenge. One way of protecting the consumer, especially the consumer that has not been fully socialized to execute informed decisions when purchasing expensive durables, is by establishing a redress environment that would ensure fair redress as well as an understanding and appreciation of the consumer. Manufacturers and retailers are often not aware of the performance failures that consumers experience concerning their products because many people do not communicate their dissatisfactions to them. However, unless and until manufacturers and retailers fully comprehend their customers' complaint behaviour, their reasons for engaging in specific complaint behaviour and the reasoning (cognitive processes) and emotional processes behind their behaviour, they will not recognize the link between complaint handling and customer loyalty and profits. The purpose of this paper was to develop a theoretical conceptual framework that would enable consumer scientists, consumer consultants, consumer behaviour researchers and those with the responsibility of handling consumer complaints to explore and understand consumer complaint behaviour in its entirety. We argue that, to be able to establish and manage a redress environment that is characterized by an understanding of the specific consumer as well as by effective complaint behaviour handling, it is of the utmost importance that the manufacturer, retailer, consumer consultant and all those that work with consumers' complaints understand the entire complaint process, including the underlying cognitive and emotional processes as well as the consumer's post‐complaint perception of justice and his/her satisfaction with the complaint handling. It is also important to understand the role that consumer‐, product‐ and redress environment‐related variables play in consumer complaint behaviour. The consumer who blames the retailer for the problem and who probably feels angry about the situation and decides to complain will expect redress. From a consumer's viewpoint, complaint‐related justice is, however, not only a matter of economic calculus but also a matter of procedure and interaction. We therefore argue for a holistic approach where consumer complaint behaviour is addressed in its entirety. Practical suggestions that could enhance customer satisfaction are given for manufacturers, retailers and those who deal with consumers' complaints.     

Consumer power and privacy: the changing nature of CRM

This paper briefly reviews the difficulties that privacy concerns are creating for the growth of e-business and customer relationship management (CRM). The paper introduces the concept that the changing nature of consumer power is an essential element in ensuring the success of relationship building. The paper argues that consumers should be studied using two dimensions of knowledge and attitudes towards CRM to create a privacy grid. Four segments are discussed in terms of customers’ reactions to information exchange and CRM activities. This grid is then translated into four distinct types of market situations and marketing strategies to be considered by CRM practitioners and recommendations made.     

Order effect of multi-touchpoints on Generation Z consumers

Abundant user-generated content has increasingly driven consumers to form or modify their purchasing decisions based on interactions with other consumers, although the extant research overlooks the customer-to-customer (C2C) interaction touchpoints. Based on the customer journey characteristics of cross-channel and multi-frequency interactions, this study explores the impact of interaction valence and interaction channel sequence on Generation Z consumers' purchase attitudes from the perspective of attitude modification process. Using a scenario-based experimental design in a restaurant setting, we sample 616 Generation Z students. Findings suggest that C2C interactions that have the same valence at each touchpoint strengthen Generation Z consumers' initial purchase attitude, whereas inconsistent valences modify purchase attitudes. Our results reveal that a negative-to-positive ordering is more conducive to the formation of a positive purchase attitude than a positive-to-negative ordering. Moreover, the cross-channel sequence of a customer journey moderates the inconsistent valence order such that the positive-to-negative order improves purchase attitude more than the negative-to-positive order. This study explains theoretically the difference of ambivalent experiences on Generation Z consumer attitudes. We provide practical suggestions for multi-channel restaurant enterprises to successfully employ customer journey touchpoint management.     

Examining the context-specific reasons and adoption of artificial intelligence-based voice assistants: A behavioural reasoning theory approach

AI-based voice assistants are some of the most popular consumer products of artificial intelligence technology. This study investigates the influence of the reasoning process on overall consumer attitudes and adoption intentions towards AI-based voice assistants. Behavioural reasoning theory was applied to hypothesize relationships between values, context-specific reasons, attitudes, and adoption intention. Partial least squares structural equation modelling was used to test the research model and hypotheses using data from 550 potential consumers in India. This research suggests a positive influence of consumers' ‘reasons for’ on their attitude and adoption intentions towards AI-based voice assistants, as well as a favourable impact of consumers' values on ‘reasons for’. This study discovered that ‘reasons for’ and ‘reasons against’ are not only opposites but are entirely autonomous and have an independent impact on consumers' attitudes towards AI-based voice assistants. This research improved our understanding of AI-based product adoption by identifying the paramount role of consumers' values and the ‘reasons for’ and ‘reasons against’ in shaping their attitudes and adoption intentions towards AI-based voice assistants.     

What Drives Consumer Participation to Loyalty Programs?

Abstract

Little is known about the way in which different loyalty program attributes underlie consumers' intentions to participate in such a program. Based upon equity theory, the current study distinguished between consumer inputs (personal data release, participation cost, purchase frequency, participation exclusivity, and participation efforts) and outputs (program benefits, number of program providers, and program duration) as underlying attributes potentially affecting participation in a loyalty program. Using conjoint analysis, we explored how different levels within each of these eight attributes affect consumers' intentions to participate. The study holds major implications for the design of successful customer loyalty programs.     

Green Demarketing in Advertisements: Comparing “Buy Green” and “Buy Less” Appeals in Product and Institutional Advertising Contexts

This research compares consumer response to traditional green advertising appeals to that of less conventional, “green demarketing” (GD) appeals—messages by for-profit companies encouraging reduced category consumption for the sake of the environment. Rather than encouraging greener consumption, modern environmentalism calls for decreased consumption overall, a trend reflected in recent advertising campaigns (e.g., Patagonia's “Don't Buy This Jacket”). Despite its potential impact and unconventionality, research on GD in general is sparse, and no empirical research has examined consumer response to GD appeals relative to traditional green appeals. In three experiments, we find that, in the context of product advertising, consumers' attitudes for green ads are more favorable than those for GD ads, mediated by greater inferences of genuine environmental concern. However, we find the reverse pattern in the context of institutional ads. Further, an “anti-consumption amplifier” message embedded in the ad—espousing the potential harm of overconsumption—further boosts favorable consumer attitudes for the GD institutional ad relative to its traditional green counterpart. Importantly, we assess all effects while controlling for consumers' individual levels of green consumerism, such that implications may be applied more generally rather than to a specific segment of green consumers.