Big Brother is Listening to You: Digital Eavesdropping in the Advertising Industry

In the Digital Age, information is more accessible than ever. Unfortunately, that accessibility has come at the expense of privacy. Now, more and more personal information is in the hands of corporations and governments, for uses not known to the average consumer. Although these entities have long been able to keep tabs on individuals, with the advent of virtual assistants and “always-listening” technologies, the ease by which a third party may extract information from a consumer has only increased. The stark reality is that lawmakers have left the American public behind. While other countries have enacted consumer privacy protections, the United States has no satisfactory legal framework in place to curb data collection by greedy businesses or to regulate how those companies may use and protect consumer data. This Article contemplates one use of that data: digital advertising. Inspired by stories of suspiciously well-targeted advertisements appearing on social media websites, this Article additionally questions whether companies have been honest about their collection of audio data. To address the potential harms consumers may suffer as a result of this deficient privacy protection, this Article proposes a framework wherein companies must acquire users\u27 consent and the government must ensure that businesses do not use consumer information for harmful purposes

Unraveling the personalization paradox: The effect of information collection and trust-building strategies on online advertisement effectiveness

Retailers gather data about customers' online behavior to develop personalized service offers. Greater personalization typically increases service relevance and customer adoption, but paradoxically, it also may increase customers' sense of vulnerability and lower adoption rates. To demonstrate this contradiction, an exploratory field study on Facebook and secondary data about a personalized advertising campaign indicate sharp drops in click-through rates when customers realize their personal information has been collected without their consent. To investigate the personalization paradox, this study uses three experiments that confirm a firm's strategy for collecting information from social media websites is a crucial determinant of how customers react to online personalized advertising. When firms engage in overt information collection, participants exhibit greater click-through intentions in response to more personalized advertisements, in contrast with their reactions when firms collect information covertly. This effect reflects the feelings of vulnerability that consumers experience when firms undertake covert information collection strategies. Trust-building marketing strategies that transfer trust from another website or signal trust with informational cues can offset this negative effect. These studies help unravel the personalization paradox by explicating the role of information collection and its impact on vulnerability and click-through rates

Effects of Website Credibility and Brand Trust on Responses to Online Behavioral Advertising

Online behavioral advertising that tracks user data has witnessed a dramatic increase in popularity. Using Psychological Reactance Theory, this study examines the effects of brand trust and website credibility on responses to behavioral advertising via privacy concerns. A 2 (brand trust: high vs. low) by 2 (website credibility: high vs. low) between-subjects experiment was conducted (N = 424). Results suggest that while brand trust influences purchase intention—as mediated via affective reactance— website credibility only exerts modest effects on the dependent variables. Implications for user perception factors and contextual factors—including ad effectiveness in the digital personalized marketing realm—are discussed

Google’s Antitrust Cases Competition Analysis in New Economy Markets

Today, global economic performance largely depends on digital ecosystems. E-commerce, cloud, social media, sharing economy are the main products of the modern innovative economic systems which are constantly raising new regulatory questions. Meanwhile the United States has an unimpeachable dominance in innovation and new technologies, as well as a large and open domestic market, the EU is only recently discovering the importance of empowering the European digital economy and aims to break down its highly fragmented cross-border online economic environment. As global economy is rapidly becoming digital, Europe’s effort to create and invest in common digital market is understandable. The comprehensive investigations launched by the European Commission into the role of social network, search engine, or sharing economy internet platforms, which are new generation technologies dominated by American firms; or the recent decision of the Court of Justice of the European Union declaring that the Commission’s US Safe Harbor Decision is invalid1 might be considered as part of an anti-American protectionist policy. However, these measures could rather be seen as part of a broader trend to foster European enterprises in technology developments

The Effects of Social and Spatial Presence on Engagement in a 3D Virtual Reality Environment: An Empirical Investigation

Virtual reality (VR) provides opportunities for businesses to innovatively engage customers. Based on presence theory, a research model was developed to test the influence of two major components of presence, social presence and spatial presence, on users’ perceptions of hedonic value, utilitarian value, and engagement. An experiment was conducted on two conditions of a VR application (low vs. high social presence) to test the hypotheses in the research model. The results reveal that social presence and spatial presence can improve hedonic value of VR. However, inconsistent with previous studies, our findings reveal a negative relationship between spatial presence and engagement. Theoretical and practical implications, as well as future research directions are subsequently discussed

Choice Hygiene for “Consumer Neuroscientists”? Ethical Considerations and Proposals for Future Endeavours

Is the use of psychological and neuroscientific methods for neuromarketing research always aligned with the principles of ethical research practice? Some neuromarketing endeavours have passed from informing consumers about available options, to helping to market as many products to consumers as possible. Needs are being engineered, using knowledge about the human brain to increase consumption further, regardless of individual, societal and environmental needs and capacities. In principle, the ground ethical principle of any scientist is to further individual, societal and environmental health and well-being with their work. If their findings can be used for the opposite, this must be part of the scientist’s considerations before engaging in such research and to make sure that the risks for misuse are minimised. Against this backdrop, we provide a series of real-life examples and a non-exhaustive literature review, to discuss in what way some practices in the neuromarketing domain may violate the Helsinki Declaration of Experimentation with Human Subjects. This declaration was set out to regulate biomedical research, but has since its inception been applied internationally also to behavioural and social research. We illustrate, point by point, how these ground ethical principles should be applied also to the neuromarketing domain. Indisputably, the growth in consumption is required due to current prevalent economical models. Thus, in the final part of the paper, we discuss how alternative models may be promotable to a larger public, aided by more ethical marketing endeavours, based on neuroscientific discoveries about the human brain. We propose this as a philosophical question, a point of discussion for the future, to make neuromarketing as a discipline, fit for the future, respecting the ethical implications of this research

Does \u2018bigger\u2019mean \u2018better\u2019? Pitfalls and shortcuts associated with big data for social research

\u2018Big data is here to stay.\u2019 This key statement has a double value: is an assumption as well as the reason why a theoretical reflection is needed. Furthermore, Big data is something that is gaining visibility and success in social sciences even, overcoming the division between humanities and computer sciences. In this contribution some considerations on the presence and the certain persistence of Big data as a socio-technical assemblage will be outlined. Therefore, the intriguing opportunities for social research linked to such interaction between practices and technological development will be developed. However, despite a promissory rhetoric, fostered by several scholars since the birth of Big data as a labelled concept, some risks are just around the corner. The claims for the methodological power of bigger and bigger datasets, as well as increasing speed in analysis and data collection, are creating a real hype in social research. Peculiar attention is needed in order to avoid some pitfalls. These risks will be analysed for what concerns the validity of the research results \u2018obtained through Big data. After a pars distruens, this contribution will conclude with a pars construens; assuming the previous critiques, a mixed methods research design approach will be described as a general proposal with the objective of stimulating a debate on the integration of Big data in complex research projecting