After having investigated the academic sphere in the preceding literature review and afterwards using the findings in order to investigate how businesses work with this, we were able to confirm many of our findings from academia. In the following section, we are going to reflect on these findings and put them into context for the further process of our research project. These reflections are thus based on both our findings from literature and our empirical study.
The concept of privacy
We regard privacy as a dynamic concept, which has changed along with the environment. The concept is likely to continue to evolve depending on how the digital world is going to advance further. As the concept itself changes, the types of privacy concerns have also changed due to the changing nature of the environment and the evolution of technology. We further understand privacy as the limited access to one’s personal information and thus as something that should offer each individual protection. But in this context, it is necessary to consider that there are many actors involved in online communication which are unknown to the discloser such as advertising platforms, social networks and third parties. This means that our control over personal information is limited. We cannot restrict the access when we do not know who has access to our data.
Disclosure of information is a complex process
Through our research, we have been able to discover that for some people, privacy plays a big role, whereas others do not care as much about it. It is something relational: depending on the relationship you have with another party/company, you are more or less likely to disclose information. If you know the other party/company well or trust it, you are more likely to disclose information. We further relate disclosure of information to a trade-off: personal information serves as a trading good as is exchanged to get other benefits in return. The individual’s privacy is thus compromised in order to get something else. The idea of the trade-off suggests that people are rational when making decisions, using their private information to get something in return.
However, even though people are said to engage in this reasonable trade-off when disclosing information, people’s behaviour is often also affected by irrational processes. In some situations, we might act thoughtfully and rationally choosing how to disclose personal information, whereas in
others we might act based on mental shortcuts and contextual cues. Drawing from our empirical analysis, it may also depend on the kind of information that is being disclosed and its level of sensitivity. It may further be affected by situational factors such as time restrictions and the social context. This irrational behaviour is also reflected in the privacy paradox: this concept describes the discrepancy between what people say regarding their privacy concerns versus how they actually behave online. Throughout our research, it has been pointed out that this inconsistency is related to the fact that consumers lack knowledge on how data works and how to navigate online. This lack of knowledge reveals an information asymmetry between companies, especially advertising platforms and digital marketers, and consumers.
We are thus of the opinion that people’s behaviour is both influenced by irrational and rational motives. It does not mean that one excludes the other but rather that they work in “accordance”.
The implications of companies’ and consumers’ distinct understandings
Throughout our research, we have found that companies and consumers have a different understanding of the concept of privacy. The difference becomes apparent when contrasting their distinct views. Companies take a more formal standpoint, whereas consumers take a more informal approach to the concept of privacy. This further enhances the present information asymmetry as we discovered throughout our research.
We expect that the identified information asymmetry and the different understanding of privacy will result in boundary turbulence, resulting in consumers questioning and potentially readjusting their individual privacy boundaries. This is likely to result in increased privacy concerns and may, in the worst-case scenario, even lead consumers to withdraw their information. Businesses need to be aware of these differences in order to fully understand their customers. Through focusing on privacy, they can build trust and transparency, which in turn is likely to affect long-term relations.
This stresses the need for businesses to address privacy on a strategic level.
The complexity of the online marketplace
When engaging with the online space and disclosing information online, many parties are involved.
In the communication between businesses and consumers, there are other parties interposed such as advertising platforms, social networks, browsers etc. These are dominated by prominent players
such as Facebook, Google and Amazon, which take a very powerful position in the marketplace.
Our empirical investigation suggests that these players follow their own agenda. The empirical study further shows that consumers do not tend to be aware of these third parties involved in the communication. As consumers engage with a variety of companies online, they might have lost the overview of who has their data and, in case of a data leakage, might not be able to comprehend where the leakage happened. It makes it thus hard for them to know who has access to their data and whether it is being misused. These arguments underline that online communication is characterised by complexity and the high number of actors involved. There are more layers to the communication than just the company and the customer. This is what we tried to capture in the visualisation below (figure 11).
Figure 11: The complexity of online communication