Data Privacy Marketing Audits, Benchmarking, and Metrics

Abstract

As the previous chapters make clear, privacy issues and strategies cannot be left to legal and IT departments. They are critical issues for marketing managers. A firm’s policies and actions regarding the collection and use of big data (e.g., sales to third parties), customer targeting, advertising, and privacy policies all have significant impacts on customers’ attitudes and behaviors, as well as vast financial implications. Even if a firm’s legal department works to ensure that it is in compliance with privacy laws and regulations (Chapter 3), in-house lawyers often ignore the effects of the resulting policies on customers’ perceptions—or at least they weight the potential legal consequences much more heavily than they do any customer and marketing effects.