How to Explore Consumers’ Privacy Choices with Behavioral Economics

Abstract

The Web has enabled consumers to access and share an unprecedented amount of information, quickly, conveniently, and cheaply. Companies have embraced new information and communication technologies and moved offline phenomena such as shopping, entertainment, or social networking into the virtual realm. With the advent of the Web, services of a new kind have emerged, such as web search or blogging. In the United Kingdom, digital value creation accounted for 7.2 % of the gross domestic product in 2010 [1]; the share of the digital economy is predicted to continue growing rapidly to reach $4.2 trillion in the G-20 nations by 2016 [2]. Retailing is among the industries that have been fundamentally disrupted by the Internet. For products such as clothing and shoes, Internet sales in the United Kingdom now account for 11.3 % of total sales, with 17.6 % growth year-on-year [3]. Average weekly spending online in May 2014 was £727.5 million [3]. In parallel, the high street is expanding into multi-channel retailing to combine the benefits of an online and offline presence. Much of the reconfiguration of the value chain has happened behind the scenes, but there is a tangible impact for consumers as well. Being greeted by name and receiving personalized product recommenda-tions used to be a distinction of up-market boutiques. Today, it is the sign of mass-personalized online shopping, and one of the ways in which a " data culture " is implemented. Harnessing the power of ubiquitous computing enables organizations to turn data into fuel for insight [4]. Given that they are a valuable resource that