The development in technology has made the gathering and distribution of information very easy. The monitoring and surveillance of a person’s movement and behaviour has also become very easy with recent development in technology. As the technologies bring so many developments in conducting business, a lot of concern has risen as to the privacy invasion of individual customers.
To gather useful information on consumer behaviours in order to present their offerings to various segment of the market, marketers has resulted in using various means in gathering information as to what each age group, income bracket, educational status etc buys, when they buy it, where they buy it, how much of it they buy and how often they buy it. All these have become easy for marketers to obtain with minimal cost without stretching across dangerous boundaries.
Such invasions of privacy have become common as it happens on daily basis. Consumers are becoming increasingly aware on how information about their buying behaviour is gathered and used by marketers, retailers and manufacturers alike. This concern on personal privacy issue is wide spreading as studies conducted in US found out that most citizens of US are very or somewhat concerned about invasion of their privacy.
Study conducted by Greaff and Harnmon on consumer attitudes about personal information and purchase behaviours find out that consumers are concerned about how their personal information and purchase information is collected and used. The study find out that though the concerned vary by age as younger consumers are more readily to give information if they are been compensated for it than older consumers; and the type of retailer in respect of credit card usage to purchase.
Information presented in the study on demographic variables shows that, the male consumers are more willing to allow companies sell information about their purchase habits than their female counterparts, and were less likely to demand that consumers be informed by companies before using information about their buying habit.
On the demographic variables measured on income, consumers with higher income are more likely to demand that information about them should not be used without their knowledge than lower earners; and are more comfortable using their credit cards to make purchases.
On Internet purchases, finding shows that males are more comfortable making their purchases using Internet than the female, though access to the Internet is not varying by gender.
The vast majority of consumers surveyed have access to the Internet both at home and at work. Though a vast majority of consumers have access to the Internet, not all have use Internet in making their purchases nor have intention of using it in the next six months. This shows that consumers are yet to develop full confidence in using the Internet to buy. This put the privacy issue as to how safe is a purchase using Internet.
In assessing the above scenario, it is pertinent to say that consumers are becoming more aware of their privacy as regards the gathering of their personal information by companies and the sell-out of such information to other companies.
Young people are more prone to give out personal information in compensation than older consumers. This is because; they value less of what a company is going to use such information for. On the other hand, the male are less concern about company selling out information about them than the female. This is because women are in nature more secretive about what they do than the male.
Companies should take the issue of their customers’ privacy seriously. The customer wants to be treated with respect. They want to know that, the company in which they use its products have them at heart and respect them as worthy individuals. Companies should therefore consider the issue of their customers’ personal information as a corporate social responsibility and such should not use the personal information of their customers’ without their consent.
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