Marketing information systems and ethics

Marketing Information Systems and Ethics

Whenever a consumer enters into a relationship with a corporation, he or she is making a leap of faith that the company will not use his or her information in a compromising fashion. However, marketers are hungry for data that will enable them to better target their promotional and sales campaigns to consumers. "At a broad level, markets may be segmented on the basis of products, product lines, geographic districts, and distribution channels. Segmentation is also possible on the basis of demographic, socioeconomic and psychographic factors (the latter based on lifestyle, attitude, and personality), customer benefit, usage, loyalty, and occasion (of use)" (Boyce 2002, p.110). The increased diversity of the population has acted as an additional incentive to collect data that might be useful in segmenting advertising campaigns. Consumers tend to aggregate in niche sections of the media, such as online or watching specific cable television shows, in contrast to the more general television and magazine audiences of previous eras. The types of market segments created for sales campaigns must be large enough so that a campaign can interest and reach a core consumer demographic, yet be specific enough to pique a likely purchaser's interest.

For convenience, consumers trust that corporations will not misuse their data when they give their credit card information, address, and phone number when making a purchase online. In other instances. consumers may have no choice but to leave a 'corporate data trail' of sensitive information. A drugstore may have a record of what types of medications the individual has purchased and possible health conditions he or she may struggle with; a bank knows the consumer's history of late mortgage payments. Often, through clever promotions such as asking consumers to fill out surveys in exchange for coupons or entering a contest, a company can glean further information about the consumer's hobbies and habits. Electronic banks have sensitive financial information about the consumer, including social security and tax information. Political causes to which the individual donates online also can shape the demographic profile of the consumer. In shaping a marketing campaign, "data from a variety of other public and private sources can also be utilized. For instance, lifestyle surveys, focus groups, customer surveys, market research, and geographical socioeconomic data included in published official government census statistics can be used to categorize people" (Boyce 2002, p.109). But the new types of data kept by corporations are highly individualized, and contain information beyond the surface demographic to which the consumer belongs: the information is so personal it can be easily used to commit credit card or insurance fraud, and besmirch a customer's name.

While increased access to such data might be a boon to sellers it is hardly likely to be as beneficial for consumers. Sellers might weakly protest that knowing more about the consumer enables them to offer special promotions of interest to their core contingent of loyal purchasers. However, most consumers do not want to be barraged by advertising, and their information, once it leaves their possession, can easily fall into unscrupulous hands, the more it is passed around. Selling databases of consumer information is far from unheard-of. A consumer who obtained a discount on a bag of pet food with a 'rewards card' may find him or herself subject to appeals from money from the Humane Society (an irritation); while someone who purchases antidepressant medication through his or her health insurance plan might suffer repercussions in getting a job if the information is discovered by a future employer.