Addressing privacy predicaments in the digital marketplace: A power‐relations perspective

TLDR

The growing use and governance of the internet and related disruptive technologies create numerous challenges to ensuring consumer online privacy. The study applies the power–responsibility equilibrium theory to investigate emerging online privacy issues in the data‑driven marketplace. Using semi‑structured interviews, the study explains why online shoppers increasingly worry about privacy and how their behavior can harm the consumer–vendor relationship. Findings show that corporate privacy responsibility and regulatory gaps deprive consumers of privacy empowerment, heighten perceived privacy contract violations, and trigger defensive responses, and that enhancing consumer privacy empowerment and assuaging privacy contract violations are distinct mechanisms to address online privacy issues while underscoring the need to address power and responsibility dynamics for a healthy information‑exchange environment.

Abstract

Abstract The utilization and governance of the internet and adjacent disruptive technologies have created numerous challenges to ensuring consumer online privacy. This study employs the power–responsibility equilibrium theory to explore emerging online privacy issues in the data‐driven marketplace. This exploratory study, based on semi‐structured interviews, explains why online shopping consumers are increasingly worried about their privacy and why they behave in a manner that could be detrimental to the consumer–vendor relationship. The findings suggest that deficiencies of corporate privacy responsibility and regulatory protection have deprived consumers of privacy empowerment. These deficiencies have also accentuated perceived privacy contract violations to trigger privacy concerns and subsequent defensive responses. We identify enhancement of consumer privacy empowerment and assuagement of privacy contract violations as two separate mechanisms of addressing online privacy issues. We also highlight the importance of addressing power and responsibility dynamics for maintaining a healthy information‐exchange environment.