The Failure of Mandated Disclosure

This article explores the spectacular prevalence, and failure, of the single most common technique for protecting personal autonomy in modern society: mandated disclosure. The article has four sections: (1) A comprehensive summary of the recurring use of mandated disclosures, in many forms and circumstances, in the areas of consumer and borrower protection, patient informed consent, contract formation, and constitutional rights; (2) A survey of the empirical literature documenting the failure of the mandated disclosure regime in informing people and in improving their decisions; (3) An account of the multitude of reasons mandated disclosures fail, focusing on the political dynamics underlying the enactments of these mandates, the incentives of disclosers to carry them out, and, most importantly, on the ability of disclosees to use them; (4) An argument that mandated disclosure not only fails to achieve its stated goal but also leads to unintended consequences that often harm the very people it intends to serve

Consumers’ self-disclosure decisions and concerns : the effects of social exclusion and agent anthropomorphism

Consumer data and privacy is becoming an increasingly important topic in marketing, as the collection and use of consumers’ personal information and instances of data breach are both on the rise. At the core of these recent shifts in the consumer data and privacy landscape is consumers’ concern with sharing their personal information. Past research on consumer privacy has focused on when and why consumers’ concerns are heightened and why people still provide their personal information despite the concerns. This dissertation extends the literature on consumer self-disclosure and privacy concerns and explores novel psychological and situational factors that influence consumers’ decision to disclose and concern with sharing their personal information to brands and marketers. In Essay 1, I focused on the influence of individual and situational differences – namely, the feeling of social exclusion – and examined at how experiencing social exclusion can increase consumers’ self-disclosure intentions toward brands. Specifically, I proposed that consumers will be more willing to share their information with a brand when they experience social exclusion, driven by their desire to forge social connections with the brand. Through five studies, I tested and confirmed these hypotheses and also demonstrated two boundary conditions. In Essay 2, I investigated how anthropomorphism of products and brands – a marketer-controlled variable – influences consumers’ concerns with sharing their personal information when there are threats to privacy in the environment. Specifically, I proposed that consumers’ concerns with information collection by agents (i.e., products or brands) would be influenced by the level of privacy threats in the environment and the anthropomorphic nature of the agent, and that the effects would be driven by the perception of control over the agent. I argued that, when threats to privacy are high (vs. low), individuals’ concern with sharing their data will increase for a non-anthropomorphic agent, but such effect will be attenuated for an anthropomorphic agent collecting the information. Furthermore, I expected that the difference in the perceived control over the agent would account for these effects. I tested and partially confirmed these hypotheses through five studiesMarketin

Alter ego, state of the art on user profiling: an overview of the most relevant organisational and behavioural aspects regarding User Profiling.

This report gives an overview of the most relevant organisational and\ud behavioural aspects regarding user profiling. It discusses not only the\ud most important aims of user profiling from both an organisation’s as\ud well as a user’s perspective, it will also discuss organisational motives\ud and barriers for user profiling and the most important conditions for\ud the success of user profiling. Finally recommendations are made and\ud suggestions for further research are given

Artificial Empathy in Marketing Interactions: Bridging the Human-AI Gap in Affective and Social Customer Experience

Artificial intelligence (AI) continues to transform firm-customer interactions. However, current AI marketing agents are often perceived as cold and uncaring and can be poor substitutes for human-based interactions. Addressing this issue, this article argues that artificial empathy needs to become an important design consideration in the next generation of AI marketing applications. Drawing from research in diverse disciplines, we develop a systematic framework for integrating artificial empathy into AI-enabled marketing interactions. We elaborate on the key components of artificial empathy and how each component can be implemented in AI marketing agents. We further explicate and test how artificial empathy generates value for both customers and firms by bridging the AI-human gap in affective and social customer experience. Recognizing that artificial empathy may not always be desirable or relevant, we identify the requirements for artificial empathy to create value and deduce situations where it is unnecessary and, in some cases, harmful

Some Reflections on Free Entry and the Rate Ceilings Under the Uniform Consumer Credit Code

Consumer protection in recent years has become one of the great populist concerns, particularly in the area of consumer credit. As one should expect, however, there has been no unanimity as to who should be protected from what, or from whom, nor as to the means of providing such protection. Some feel that consumer protection still means self-protection in the existing system-let the buyer beware-and view consumer education in a broad sense as perhaps the most important aspect of providing protection. Others view consumer protection as a matter outlawing or regulating abusive practices and giving the consumer more rights. Some emphasize a litigative response, and suggest that part of the remedy should make legal representation more available and provide more effective tools such as class actions and small claims courts. Still others suggest that the evils and abuses are not great enough to justify interference with our free market system. In sum, consumer protection appears quite amorphous, taking form depending upon how one perceives the problem. Recent literature such as Caplovitz\u27s The Poor Pay More has done much to highlight and document various problems and abuses. However, the title, The Poor Pay More, tends to obscure the fact that the problems are not limited to a certain economic strata, i.e., the poor, as well as the fact that the costs are not solely monetary. The problems affect a broad segment of people not equipped or able to deal with the marketplace on its own terms

Co-Creating Strategy and Culture in New Technology Regimes on the Internet: How New Digital Entrepreneurs affect Mature Incumbents in the Fashion Industry

One of the least understood aspects of knowledge management in organizational research and the sociology of innovation is to explain how new technology paradigms facilitate the creation and adoption of new regimes and business practice of innovation by old firms. When innovation regimes are started up by cohesive communities of collaborators, born-online and born-global, the relationship is even less understood. My research explores how some of the largest fashion-technology start-ups on the Internet create and spread new technology and practice in digital marketing and e-commerce to vertically integrated, transnational fashion industry leaders. I bridge innovation and economic sociology with international business and strategic management to explain how Ron Burt's "good ideas" are actually generated and meaningfully reapplied by emerging new entrants in the organizational practice of established incumbent fashion firms from Europe and the US. The fashion industry is an extreme case-study offering an ideal context to investigate these emergent processes, revealing the dynamic relationship between innovation and change. The research posits that executives in established organizations in this context can manage the tension between challenge and opportunity of adopting disruptive practice by learning to manage collaboratively the parts of their value chains that are most affected by the entrepreneurial creativity of new peers

Greater Space Means More Service: Leveraging the innovative power of architecture and design

Organizational structures certainly are of great importance in order to determine employees’ behaviour and performance. On the other hand, physical structures also significantly influence the way staff and customers view any company and interact with it. In service based activity, such as in retailing, banking, hospitality, and so, firms and institutions are competing thanks to innovations in products/services, delivery processes, and management styles. Innovative approaches may also materialize into the design of facilities. Service providers are in a position to significantly improve convenience, productivity, and attractiveness by designing space and defining appropriate layout carefully. This pattern also has to include identification of the meanings, characterization of size and qualification of the process by which any service facility delivers messages. In the last session of the paper, we address a particular type of service facilities, namely the buildings of institutions for higher education in management. The objective is then to analyze how facilities have evolved in order to cope with the change affecting business education.Service; innovation; architecture; working place; corporate symbols