Marketing without Consent: Consumer Choice and Costs, Privacy, and Public Policy

Abstract

Most of the privacy debate pertains to personal information being collected and disseminated in databases without consumer consent or perhaps even knowledge. The author asserts that a more important issue is how these databases are used to impose marketing costs on consumers without their consent. All marketers realize it is costly to communicate to potential consumers, but they often forget that consumers bear some marketing communications costs as well. The author suggests that economic efficiency would be enhanced by requiring marketers to internalize at least some of the consumer costs, particularly those likely to be borne involuntarily. Current regulations address only some costs for some media and often limit rather than enhance consumer choice. The author presents new public policy recommendations to improve efficiency and consumer choice.

Surrendering Information through the Looking Glass: Transparency, Trust, and Protection

“…In a direct marketing study, Dommeyer and Gross (2003) build on a large body of research on privacy concern and consumer characteristics (Foxman and Kilcoyne 1993;Goodwin 1991;Milne 2000;Nowak andPhelps 1992, 1995;Petty 2000) to examine consumer knowledge of privacy-related laws and practices and consumer awareness of strategies available to protect their privacy. Their findings show that consumers are not very knowledgeable about consumer privacy but are aware of privacy-protection strategies in a direct marketing setting, leading to the obvious conclusion that privacy controls need to be easy for consumers to implement.…”

Targeted Marketing and Public Health

“…6501 et seq.) prohibits commercial Web sites targeted to children from collecting personal information from a child in violation of FTC regulations (99). However, regulations that directly address marketing through the Internet and other digital media are either absent or lag far behind those that apply to more traditional advertising channels (14,90).…”

Diffusion and success factors of mobile marketing

“…A simple registration ensures sending relevant messages to an interested audience [63]. Unsolicited messages, commonly known as spam [81], stifle user acceptance [82] -particularly as mobile phones cannot distinguish between spam and genuine communication automatically.…”