TY - JOUR
T1 - Does (customer data) size matter? Generating valuable customer insights with less customer relationship risk
AU - Plangger, Kirk
AU - Marder, Ben
AU - Montecchi, Matteo
AU - Watson, Richard
AU - Pitt, Leyland
N1 - Funding Information:
The authors would like to thank the British Academy for partly funding this research through their Small Research Grants scheme. Moreover, the authors would like to thank the King's Business School for providing initial seed corn funding for this research.
Publisher Copyright:
© 2023 The Authors. Psychology & Marketing published by Wiley Periodicals LLC.
PY - 2023/10
Y1 - 2023/10
N2 - Customer surveillance is a pervasive marketing practice that involves the collection,usage, and storage of customers' data from transactions, loyalty programs, and social media. Customer data are valuable to firms in gaining or maintaining an edge over competitors by developing superior customer insights that may assist product or service innovations. However, customer surveillance practices also risk customer relationships by potentially activating privacy and data security concerns. This article explores customer insight strategies that focus customer surveillance by assessing the insight value of data sources to avoid unnecessary data collection and capture.Three prediction experiments show that three distinct data source attributes, namely data quantity, data detail, and data content, are diagnostic of the prediction accuracy of customer psychographic characteristics and behavioral intentions. By demonstrating that customer insights are more (or less) valuable when derived from different data sources, this article shows that “more” data is not necessarily better.We advocate a smarter approach to customer surveillance practices that are selective in choosing to capture customer data that can yield more accurate customer insights while reducing the risk of jeopardizing customer relationships.
AB - Customer surveillance is a pervasive marketing practice that involves the collection,usage, and storage of customers' data from transactions, loyalty programs, and social media. Customer data are valuable to firms in gaining or maintaining an edge over competitors by developing superior customer insights that may assist product or service innovations. However, customer surveillance practices also risk customer relationships by potentially activating privacy and data security concerns. This article explores customer insight strategies that focus customer surveillance by assessing the insight value of data sources to avoid unnecessary data collection and capture.Three prediction experiments show that three distinct data source attributes, namely data quantity, data detail, and data content, are diagnostic of the prediction accuracy of customer psychographic characteristics and behavioral intentions. By demonstrating that customer insights are more (or less) valuable when derived from different data sources, this article shows that “more” data is not necessarily better.We advocate a smarter approach to customer surveillance practices that are selective in choosing to capture customer data that can yield more accurate customer insights while reducing the risk of jeopardizing customer relationships.
KW - customer data
KW - customer insight value
KW - customer privacy and data security concerns
KW - customer relationships
KW - customer surveillance
KW - prediction experiments
U2 - 10.1002/mar.21866
DO - 10.1002/mar.21866
M3 - Article
SN - 0742-6046
VL - 40
SP - 2016
EP - 2028
JO - Psychology and marketing
JF - Psychology and marketing
IS - 10
ER -