Hey everyone! After a while, I am again active on my
blog. Today I am going to guide you through my understanding of the research ethics. This blog post is a good opportunity to explore my thoughts, ideas and
perceptions. Presented ideas will be highly subjective and sometimes even
controversial. However, I feel that this approach can generate interesting
insights.
To
begin with, there is no unanimity among academics and practitioners with regard
to the ethicality of gathering information and insights. Some researchers,
including Valentino-DeVries and Davis, believe that greater amount of data
about consumers will result in more successful customization efforts. Others,
such as Kozinets and Rayport, think that tracking consumers, though acceptable
from the legal standpoint, cannot be tolerated in research and business. Both
views have numerous supporters and opponents, but I tend to support the
position of the ethics defenders. I think that research and business should
self-impose limitations with regard to the amount and types of data they
collect and analyze.
To
provide grounds for my opinion, I would like to describe major propositions of
Kozinets and Rayport and explain my reasons for supporting their standpoint. In
the book “Netnography. Doing Ethnographic Research Online” (the one I am also using
for my paper), Kozinets devotes time to determining ethicality
of the netnographic research. Although in the world of big data and social
media there is a temptation to use observation data without any
constraints, the author strongly believes that research should not cross
the ethical borders. For a netnographic study to pass the ethics barrier,
several criteria should be present. A researcher should fully disclose his
presence, affiliations and intentions to the online community. He or she should
also ask for a permission to observe behaviors of online community members and
get informed consent to use the gathered data. Finally, researcher should cite,
anonymize and credit research participants. Only if the research program meets
these requirements, it can be considered ethical.
I
feel that this approach to conducting online research finds a reasonable
balance between research goals and respecting privacy of data obtained from
research participants. Although full disclosure might result in resentment of
community members that are being studied, a researcher will get these insights prior to conducting the study and will avoid disappointing online users. Suggested tools
are aimed at building trust with community participants and might result in
more comprehensive research results.
Rayport
(2011) goes a bit further in his propositions and elaborates on the guidelines
for companies. To avoid alienating customers, companies should follow a set of
four ethical principles. First, they should be clear in their practices and let
users know that their data is being collected. Second, users should be in
control of the privacy settings that should be intuitive and simple.
Third, companies should adopt a privacy by design attitude. They should
protect data and make customer privacy a guiding principle. Finally, companies
should reward customers for using their information. This could be done through
either better customization or additional rewards.
I
consider Rayport’s guidelines to be very reasonable, concise and actionable.
They do not require considerable investment but demand cultural change. For
instance, many search companies might have problems with the third principle,
since the latest initiatives include appearance of customer photo and name on
the product reviews. Users should invest additional amount of time to find the
hidden check box in the privacy settings to protect the privacy of their data.
It might also indicate that the company has failed in terms of the second
principle. Therefore, though I support these guidelines, I understand that
their implementation might be challenging.
I
feel that my personal experience supports this concern. I have several personal
examples dealing with data privacy for research and business purposes. Whenever
I am conducting survey research, I try to avoid asking sensitive information if
it will not help me in reaching research objectives. I believe that much of the
information could be inferred instead of directly asked. For instance, there is
little value in asking consumers about the importance of product attributes.
This will result in extremely biased results that could not be used as a
reliable estimate. A better way would be to ask customers about their beliefs and infer the importance of the attributes or factors. This way, I will be able to
avoid soliciting sensitive information without sacrificing the quality of the
analysis.
Another
example is associated with data collection for business purposes. While working
for a mobile app developing company, I was a strong advocate of the data
privacy. I always felt very skeptical about the developers’ attempts to push
for even more permissions. I could understand and justify the need to access phone's storage and network. However, reasons for a dictionary app to access
the phone calls are beyond my understanding. This information is not a
prerequisite for a successful functioning of the app. Hence, it represents an
excessive demand from consumers that might feel puzzled if asked for such
permissions from an app. Since the company cannot make use from these data
anyway, we decided to exclude such permissions from the list.
On
the other hand, the ethical issue should be considered from the consumer’s point of
view. As a customer, I feel that some amount of information should be revealed
to tailor offerings to meet my needs. Nowadays most consumers are bombarded by
special offers, discounts and other promotional messages. It has become
extremely difficult to pay attention and spend time on sorting the useful
offerings out of the bunch of completely irrelevant messages. In most cases,
all offerings and promotions go directly to a trash folder without even being
opened. I am aware that I might lose a potentially beneficial deal by adopting
this approach but I just cannot lose time sorting things out. Therefore, I and
probably many other consumers are prepared to share some information to receive
truly customized and useful promotions (Valentino-DeVries, 2012). However, for
this to come true, several conditions must be met.
First,
companies should inform consumers about a possibility to tailor offerings in
exchange for information. Hence, the consumer should be empowered to decide
whether he or she accepts this offer. This approach will be more challenging
for the companies than currently employed methods, since the acceptance rate
might be low. However, I have no doubt that it is more ethical and better
suited to creating credibility and trust between the customer and the marketer.
Rewarded opt-in scheme is a good instrument to increase the acceptance rate
while maintaining credible long-term relationships with customers. In this
regard, I completely agree with Roberts (2012) who considers informed data
collection in exchange for rewards a morally acceptable practice.
Storage
of the data is the second condition that is crucial for me to let the company
gather information about myself. I strongly believe that any information that
could identify a person cannot be stored and should be immediately deleted if
gathered. In a way, my reasoning follows the guidelines suggested by Valentino-DeVries
and Singer-Vine (2012) with respect to personally identifiable information
(PII). However, I strongly believe that anonymization of gathered data is not a
way out of the problem. Currently, we often experience leakages of private data as in case of LinkedIn in 2012 and Adobe just
recently. I am not aware of the ways these companies stored the data but I
assume that they might have anonymized them. Nevertheless, the data was stolen
and de-anonymized. Although I agree to share information to the particular
company, I have not authorized data transmission to any third party entity. This
fact motivates me to support Roberts (2012) that storage of personally
identifiable information (such as images) should be prohibited.
In a word, I believe that companies
and market agencies should conduct research in accordance with the suggested ethical standards.
They should inform participants of their activities and the intended use of the
gathered data. Although consumers are prepared to share some information,
researchers and companies should self-impose a limit and avoid gathering and
storing personally identifiable information. Non-PII gathered data should be
properly protected. This way, we might find an acceptable balance between
research/company goals and consumers’ desire for customization.
That’s
it for today. I would be glad if you would post comments, make suggestions and
provide constructive feedback. Take care and see you next week in my blog or in
person.
