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

Abstract

Trust and transparency influence consumer information exchanges, yet the understanding of how they shape marketing and public policy relating to privacy and security issues is not current with the digital and informational age. People face increasing complexity in online exchanges of information and lack the time, attention, and wherewithal to understand how to protect themselves. Society's reliance on technology results in individuals engaging in continuous partial attention and behaving as cognitive misers. The author explains the concept of surrendering to technology and presents a sharing-surrendering information matrix to address this phenomenon. The matrix clarifies the difference between surrendering versus sharing information online, leading to the proposition that current efforts to protect privacy and security, such as enhancing trust and transparency, lack legitimacy and will not be effective in the digital age. Surrendering information is a long-term societal and ethical issue for marketers and policy makers, requiring improvement(s) in verification mechanisms and increased educational efforts aimed at enhancing consumers' attention. Keywords: information, trust, transparency, protection, privacyThe best victory is when the opponent surrenders of its own accord before there are any actual hostilities.... It is best to win without fighting. -Sun TzuExchanging Information on the Internet T he Internet has evolved and encroached on marketing with a vengeance. Originating as a method for communication and information, it has grown into a context for transactions, analyses, and multifaceted interactions. The digital age and the "Internet of Things" provide unique advantages through technology that enable consumers, organizations, and now machines to rapidly exchange information and acquire knowledge. Artificial intelligence and facial recognition software are becoming more conventional innovations used to facilitate exchanges. Information is a product and by-product of many of these innovative exchanges; a product that is gathered, stored, packaged, and sold. Firms purportedly use "big data" to personalize services and products as a means of improving customer satisfaction and increasing customer lifetime value, sometimes without much forethought. Society's increasing reliance on technology creates a data-rich environment that is inextricably intertwined with marketing and public policy issues of transparency, trust, and consumer protection.The ease and convenience of exchanging information online often leaves consumers 1 with little choice but to participate, and little time to systematically process the short-term and/or long-term implications of this information exchange. The speed of innovation and adoption of new technology by consumers and organizations means that the use of data as a resource is exponentially increasing. American consumers face a data-rich environment with few modern legal or regulatory protections and rely on reactive measures to adapt to the new environment of limited privacy and...

Algorithm Overdependence: How the Use of Algorithmic Recommendation Systems Can Increase Risks to Consumer Well-Being

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Using Blockchain to Improve Decision Making That Benefits the Public Good

“…It is noteworthy that the Blockchain implementation allows for trust increase while maintaining full anonymity of the individuals. This is important as recent discussion on mechanisms to improve trust have raised debates on whether transparency is useful for trust increase (Walker, 2016). While longstanding belief among researchers was that increased transparency leads to increased trust (Grimmelikhuijsen, 2012b), some works argue that indeed the opposite is true (Grimmelikhuijsen, 2012a).…”

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