Consumer Privacy and Marketing Avoidance

Il-Horn Hann (), Kai-Lung Hui, Sang-Yong Tom Lee and Ivan Png

Industrial Organization from University Library of Munich, Germany

Abstract: We introduce consumer avoidance into analytical marketing research. We show that consumer efforts to conceal themselves and to deflect marketing have a crucial impact on sellers¡¯ marketing strategy. Under reasonable conditions, seller marketing is a strategic complement with consumer concealment. Hence, consumer measures to conceal themselves from marketing will increase its cost-effectiveness and lead sellers to market more. Policies that encourage consumers to conceal their identities would lead sellers to increase marketing. By contrast, policies that encourage consumers to deflect seller marketing would lead sellers to reduce marketing. Further, there is a clear need for public policy. To the extent of the externality from the sellers to consumers, the equilibrium levels of marketing (chosen by sellers) and concealment and deflection (chosen by consumers) exceed the social optimum.

JEL-codes: L (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Pages: 27 pages
Date: 2005-03-25
Note: Type of Document - pdf; pages: 27
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (17)

Downloads: (external link)
https://econwpa.ub.uni-muenchen.de/econ-wp/io/papers/0503/0503009.pdf (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:wpa:wuwpio:0503009

Access Statistics for this paper

More papers in Industrial Organization from University Library of Munich, Germany
Bibliographic data for series maintained by EconWPA ( this e-mail address is bad, please contact ).