Frontiers: The Intended and Unintended Consequences of Privacy Regulation for Consumer Marketing

Jean-Pierre Dubé (), John G. Lynch (), Dirk Bergemann (), Mert Demirer (), Avi Goldfarb (), Garrett Johnson (), Anja Lambrecht (), Tesary Lin (), Anna Tuchman () and Catherine Tucker ()
Additional contact information
Jean-Pierre Dubé: University of Chicago, Chicago, Illinois 60637
John G. Lynch: University of Colorado Boulder, Boulder, Colorado 80309
Dirk Bergemann: Yale University, New Haven, Connecticut 06520
Mert Demirer: Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Cambridge, Massachusetts 02139
Avi Goldfarb: University of Toronto, Toronto, Ontario M5S 1A1, Canada
Garrett Johnson: Boston University, Boston, Massachusetts 02215
Anja Lambrecht: London Business School, London NW1 4SA, United Kingdom
Tesary Lin: Boston University, Boston, Massachusetts 02215
Anna Tuchman: Northwestern University, Evanston, Illinois 60208
Catherine Tucker: Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Cambridge, Massachusetts 02139

Marketing Science, 2025, vol. 44, issue 5, 975-984

Abstract: As businesses increasingly rely on granular consumer data, the public has increasingly pushed for enhanced regulation to protect consumers’ privacy. We provide a perspective based on the academic marketing literature that evaluates the various benefits and costs of existing and pending government regulations and corporate privacy policies. We make four key points. First, data-based personalized marketing is not automatically harmful. Second, consumers have heterogeneous privacy preferences, and privacy policies may unintentionally favor the preferences of the rich. Third, privacy regulations may stifle innovation by entrepreneurs who are more likely to cater to underserved, niche consumer segments. Fourth, privacy measures may favor large companies who have less need for third-party data and can afford compliance costs. We also discuss technology platforms’ recent proposals for privacy solutions that mitigate some of these harms but, again, in a way that might disadvantage small firms and entrepreneurs.

Keywords: privacy; consumer protection; discrimination; digital exclusion; competition; regulation (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2025
References: Add references at CitEc
Citations:

Downloads: (external link)
http://dx.doi.org/10.1287/mksc.2024.0901 (application/pdf)

Related works:
This item may be available elsewhere in EconPapers: Search for items with the same title.

Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text

Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:inm:ormksc:v:44:y:2025:i:5:p:975-984

Access Statistics for this article

More articles in Marketing Science from INFORMS Contact information at EDIRC.
Bibliographic data for series maintained by Chris Asher ().