Freedom from interference: Decisional privacy as a dimension of consumer privacy online

Abstract

The introduction of AI-based technologies has dramatically altered the premises for consumer privacy, enabling the unprecedented manipulation of consumers’ decision-making online. Given these recent threats to consumer privacy and autonomy, and considering autonomy as the ultimate outcome of privacy, I propose that a reconceptualization is warranted to reflect contemporary consumer privacy challenges and to realign the concept with its theoretical foundations. To this end, I introduce the dimension of decisional privacy, focused on autonomy versus interference in consumer decision-making. Building on previous privacy literature and extending previous theorizing about information privacy and decisional privacy as complementary, I posit that these two dimensions of privacy together comprise consumer privacy. Addressing protection from interference as an under-communicated function of consumer privacy, the paper aims to clarify, exemplify, and engage in the conceptual development of decisional privacy in the context of consumer decision-making online. In addition to its significance for consumer wellbeing and democracy collectively, the extension of consumer privacy to explicitly encompass interference has theoretical implications for privacy concern, the proxy used to measure privacy, yielding important insights for marketing scholars and practitioners.