Mining social network data for personalisation and privacy concerns: A case study of Facebook’s Beacon

This is the post-print version of the final published paper that is available from the link below.The popular success of online social networking sites (SNS) such as Facebook is a hugely tempting resource of data mining for businesses engaged in personalised marketing. The use of personal information, willingly shared between online friends' networks intuitively appears to be a natural extension of current advertising strategies such as word-of-mouth and viral marketing. However, the use of SNS data for personalised marketing has provoked outrage amongst SNS users and radically highlighted the issue of privacy concern. This paper inverts the traditional approach to personalisation by conceptualising the limits of data mining in social networks using privacy concern as the guide. A qualitative investigation of 95 blogs containing 568 comments was collected during the failed launch of Beacon, a third party marketing initiative by Facebook. Thematic analysis resulted in the development of taxonomy of privacy concerns which offers a concrete means for online businesses to better understand SNS business landscape - especially with regard to the limits of the use and acceptance of personalised marketing in social networks

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

Informed Consent to Address Trust, Control, and Privacy Concerns in User Profiling

More and more, services and products are being personalised or\ud tailored, based on user-related data stored in so called user profiles or user\ud models. Although user profiling offers great benefits for both organisations and\ud users, there are several psychological factors hindering the potential success of user profiling. The most important factors are trust, control and privacy\ud concerns. This paper presents informed consent as a means to address the\ud hurdles trust, control, and privacy concerns pose to user profiling

Is online personalisation important to millennials? A UK study in the context of personalised search engines

Online personalisation has recently become a trend across the Internet. By using consumer data and advances in technology, brands are able to provide individual users with different content across the same platform through personalisation. Despite benefits for both marketers and consumers being evident, there are growing concerns regarding the provision of personal data for this purpose. This chapter aims to explore how Millennials perceive the cost and benefits of online personalisation in the context of search engines, as well as how they interact with personalised platforms. The results of an online survey of UK consumers suggest that privacy concerns and perceived benefits especially influence Millennials’ willingness to interact with search engine personalisation in the disclosure of personal data. Privacy concerns affect willingness to disclose contact data in particular, which appears to be a cost that Millennials overall appear unwilling to forgo for greater personalisation online. However, Millennials are found to desire high levels of personalisation either side of this concern. Interestingly, a positive relationship is found between Internet expertise and the perceived value of search engine personalisation. No evidence is found to suggest control or consumer-brand relationship as significantly influential in Millennials’ perceptions of search engine personalisation

Using privacy calculus theory to explore entrepreneurial directions in mobile location-based advertising: Identifying intrusiveness as the critical risk factor

Location-based advertising is an entrepreneurial and innovative means for advertisers to reach out through personalised messages sent directly to mobile phones using their geographic location. The mobile phone users' willingness to disclose their location and other personal information is essential for the successful im- plementation of mobile location-based advertising (MLBA). Despite the potential enhancement of the user ex- perience through such personalisation and the improved interaction with the marketer, there is an increasing tension between that personalisation and mobile users' concerns about privacy. While the privacy calculus theory (PCT) suggests that consumers make privacy-based decisions by evaluating the benefits any information may bring against the risk of its disclosure, this study examines the specific risks and benefits that influence consumers' acceptance of MLBA. A conceptual model is proposed based on the existing literature and a stan- dardised survey was developed and targeted at individuals with known interests in the subject matter. From these requests, 252 valid responses were received and used to evaluate the key benefits and risks of MLBA from the users' perspectives. While the results confirmed the importance of internet privacy concerns (IPC) as an important determinant, they also indicate that monetary rewards and intrusiveness have a notably stronger impact on acceptance intentions towards MLBA. Intrusiveness is the most important risk factor in determining mobile users' intentions to accept MLBA and therefore establishing effective means of minimising the perceived intrusiveness of MLBA can be expected to have the greatest impact on achieving effective communications with mobile phone users

Integrating customer relationship management strategies in (B2C) e-commerce environments

Creating value and generating a total customer experience(TCE ) is important for E -Commerce in order to attract customers. However, with increasing competition in the marketplace, it is becoming increasingly difficult to retain customers. E-Commerce, therefore, should focus on continuously providing value to the customers to build long-term relationships and reduce customer defections. We have evaluated five E -Banking sites from the UK finance industry and have shown that an organisation whose Web site is usable in HCI terms (that satisfies the Web Design heuristics / E -Commerce guidelines) might not always generate a TCE . It is important that along with usability heuristics, customer relationship management (CRM) strategies are integrated into the design of E-Commerce sites. In this paper, we have applied the service quality (SERVQUAL ) framework from the relationship marketing literature for deriving customer relationship enhancing heuristics which can be integrated into the design of E -Commerce environments

The role of the humanisation of smart home speakers in the personalisation–privacy paradox

This article examines the personalisation–privacy paradox through the privacy calculus lens in the context of smart home speakers. It also considers the direct and moderating role of humanisation in the personalisation–privacy paradox. This characteristic refers to how human the device is perceived to be, given its voice''s tone and pacing, original responses, sense of humour, and recommendations. The model was tested on a sample of 360 users of different brands of smart home speakers. These users were heterogeneous in terms of age, gender, income, and frequency of use of the device. The results confirm the personalisation–privacy paradox and verify uncanny valley theory, finding the U-shaped effect that humanisation has on risks of information disclosure. They also show that humanisation increases benefits, which supports the realism maximisation theory. Specifically, they reveal that users will perceive the messages received as more useful and credible if the devices seem human. However, the human-likeness of these devices should not exceed certain levels as it increases perceived risk. These results should be used to highlight the importance of the human-like communication of smart home speakers. © 2022 The Author