From user-generated data to data-driven innovation: A research agenda to understand user privacy in digital markets

TLDR

Data‑driven innovation has spurred new products and business models, yet the rise of sophisticated data‑management and user‑behavior prediction strategies has heightened privacy concerns, and a systematic review of user‑generated data and DDI is lacking. This study seeks to comprehensively understand the main user‑privacy challenges that affect data‑driven innovation. The authors conduct a three‑phase approach: a systematic literature review, in‑depth interviews on user‑generated data and data‑driven innovation, and Latent Dirichlet Allocation topic modeling to extract insights. The analysis uncovers 14 topics, 14 future research questions, and 7 propositions, and discusses the pivotal role of user privacy in data‑driven innovation within digital markets.

Abstract

In recent years, strategies focused on data-driven innovation (DDI) have led to the emergence and development of new products and business models in the digital market. However, these advances have given rise to the development of sophisticated strategies for data management, predicting user behavior, or analyzing their actions. Accordingly, the large-scale analysis of user-generated data (UGD) has led to the emergence of user privacy concerns about how companies manage user data. Although there are some studies on data security, privacy protection, and data-driven strategies, a systematic review on the subject that would focus on both UGD and DDI as main concepts is lacking. Therefore, the present study aims to provide a comprehensive understanding of the main challenges related to user privacy that affect DDI. The methodology used in the present study unfolds in the following three phases; (i) a systematic literature review (SLR); (ii) in-depth interviews framed in the perspectives of UGD and DDI on user privacy concerns, and finally, (iii) topic-modeling using a Latent Dirichlet allocation (LDA) model to extract insights related to the object of study. Based on the results, we identify 14 topics related to the study of DDI and UGD strategies. In addition, 14 future research questions and 7 research propositions are presented that should be consider for the study of UGD, DDI and user privacy in digital markets. The paper concludes with an important discussion regarding the role of user privacy in DDI in digital markets.