Journal of Public Policy and Marketing

The authors examine potential relationships among categories of personal information, beliefs about direct marketing, situational characteristics, specific privacy concerns, and consumers’ direct marketing shopping habits. Furthermore, the authors offer an assessment of the trade-offs consumers are willing to make when they exchange personal information for shopping benefits. The findings indicate that public policy and self-regulatory efforts to alleviate consumer privacy concerns should provide consumers with more control over the initial gathering and subsequent dissemination of personal information. Such efforts must also consider the type of information sought, because consumer concern and willingness to provide marketers with personal data vary dramatically by information type.

The author argues that social marketing has been defined improperly in much of the literature. A revised definition is proposed and the domain of social marketing defined. He concludes with suggestions for implications for future growth of the discipline.

The Federal Trade Commission (FTC) is one of many organizations studying influences on consumer privacy online. The authors investigate these influences, taking into consideration the current body of literature on privacy and the Internet and the FTC's core principles of fair information practice. The authors analyze these influences to assess the underlying factors of privacy concern online. The authors examine the current recommendations and actions of the FTC in light of the results of an e-mail survey of online consumers in the United States that assessed their attitudes toward privacy online. The authors find that the FTC's core principles address many of online consumers’ privacy concerns. However, two factors not directly incorporated in the five principles, the relationships between entities and online users and the exchange of information for appropriate compensation, may influence consumers’ privacy concerns.

The authors report results of a mall-intercept study regarding the effects of health claims on consumer information search and processing behavior. Results suggest that the presence of health and nutrient-content claims on food packages induces respondents to truncate information search to the front panel of packages. Respondents who either truncate information search or view claims provide more positive summary judgments of products and give greater weight to the information mentioned in claims than to the information available in the Nutrition Facts panel. The presence of a claim also is associated with a halo effect (rating the product higher on other health attributes not mentioned in the claim) and, for one of the three products tested, a magic-bullet effect (attributing inappropriate health benefits to the product). The authors discuss the policy implications of these results for Food and Drug Administration health claim regulations.

This paper presents an overview of consumer privacy that integrates the public policy and behavioral literatures. Consumer privacy is defined in terms of control over information disclosure and the environment in which a consumer transaction occurs. These two dimensions generate a 2×2 matrix, identifying four states of privacy based on control over environment, information disclosure, both, or neither. For each state, managerial and policy implications can be derived.

Consumer privacy is a public policy issue that has received substantial attention over the last thirty years. The phenomenal growth of the Internet has spawned several new concerns about protecting the privacy of consumers. The authors examine both historical and conceptual analyses of privacy and discuss domestic and international regulatory and self-regulatory approaches to confronting privacy issues on the Internet. The authors also review ethical theories that apply to consumer privacy and offer specific suggestions for corporate ethical policy and public policy as well as a research agenda.

Marketers’ use of the new information technologies has provided the opportunity for improved market segmentation and target marketing. However, the profession faces ethical conflicts because application of these technologies commonly invades consumer privacy. The authors examine the ethical dimensions of marketing practice in relation to consumer privacy. The meaning of privacy in a marketing context is explored and specific marketing threats to consumer privacy are described. After examining current and potential mechanisms to safeguard consumer privacy, the authors conclude that marketers must make an active commitment to ethical behavior in this area if restrictive legislation is to be avoided.

The Credit Card Act of 2009 reflects increased public policy concern about the risky credit behaviors of young adults. This act promotes increased responsibility of parents and implies that young adults must acquire financial knowledge and practice responsible financial behaviors. This study addresses this public issue by investigating the psychological processes underlying young adults’ risky credit card behaviors and the role of parents and financial knowledge in the financial behavior of young adults. A conceptual model based on an extension of the theory of planned behavior is proposed. The authors collected data from a sample of first-year students at a major public university. The results show that both parental norm and parental socioeconomic status are important factors that influence students’ risky credit behaviors. Furthermore, subjective financial knowledge does more to prevent risky credit behaviors than objective financial knowledge. Finally, behavioral intention is the most important factor in preventing risky credit behaviors and credit card debt accumulation. The authors draw on their findings to provide public policy implications.

In a between-subjects experiment, the authors examine how differences in Nutrition Facts information on fat and fiber, coupled with differing claims for these nutrients (including multiple nutrient claims and a health claim), influence consumers’ product evaluations, perceptions and awareness of disease risk, and trust of the claims and Nutrition Facts information. Results show that the Nutrition Facts information regarding fat affects consumers’ evaluations and perceptions of disease risk but that information on fiber does not. Claims do not affect product evaluations or purchase intentions, and there is a weak effect of inclusion of a health claim on disease risk perceptions. Consumers are less likely to recognize incongruencies in claim and Nutrition Facts information about fiber than fat. Incongruencies regarding the level of fat in the product result in lower trust in the claim information but do not affect trust in the Nutrition Facts data. The authors discuss implications for consumer welfare and public policy.

The authors examine consumer perspectives of data collection awareness and knowledge of name removal mechanisms, such as opt in and opt out, across mail, telephone, and Internet direct channels. The authors investigate consumer privacy states based on the fair information practices of notice (data collection awareness) and choice (knowledge of name removal mechanisms). Data from a national survey suggest that name removal preference varies by channel, consumer privacy state, channel-specific purchase experience, and consumer demographics. Empirical support is also found for alternative approaches (i.e., opt-in methods) for removing personal information from direct marketing lists.