Jeton Sabanovski
Southern New Hampshire University
In today’s world, marketing research has begun to use the Internet and popular social networking sites such as, Facebook and Twitter, to gather personal information of all users. It’s becoming a lot easier for companies to connect directly with customers and collect individual information that goes into a computer database. This information can also be matched to other websites and share data collected during unrelated transactions. There are ethical and technical considerations that need to be addressed on how companies conduct its market research. Two major examples of ethical considerations of online marketing are privacy and confidentiality. Many online consumers try to avoid anything that will result in invading their privacy, but many companies tend to do that without the consumer’s knowledge. A company can easily have the ability to collect and store information relating to a consumer that can violate their right to privacy. The companies use this information to target certain advertising to that consumer, but the constant targeting can put a strain on the privacy of the consumer and start to result in a breach of confidentiality. Businesses are constantly sharing consumer’s information with partners or other affiliates to precisely target them with certain services or products they offer. Some companies sell the information to outside companies to make extra money that will lead to more strain on your privacy or even worse, identity theft. The most important example of technical consideration of online marketing is security. Security is the number one issue in a consumer’s mind when they need to use personal information to purchase or do anything online that requires that information. Hackers and viruses can lead to personal information on any database to be sold and used to wreak havoc on innocent consumers. Viruses can be
References: Masters, T. (n.d.). Ethical Considerations of Marketing Research. Retrieved from http://smallbusiness.chron.com/ethical-considerations-marketing-research-43621.html. Sullivan, B. (Dec 6). Online privacy fears are real. Retrieved from http://www.nbcnews.com/id/3078835/t/online-privacy-fears-are-real/#.UZl358qE72o