| dc.description.abstract | The purpose of this thesis is to understand how different data collection practices and usage of personal data in advertising affects consumers’ experiences when using social media platforms. More specifically, the thesis sheds light on who is seen as responsible for a user’s data when that data is used in highly personalized advertisement.
We present relevant literature focusing on the firm and consumers perspectives through the lens of Online Behavioral Advertising. These perspectives highlight the importance of privacy concern, intrusiveness and responsibility attribution according to our research questions. Additionally, we go through the literature on covert vs. overt data collection and intention to purchase (ITP).
Our research method was an experiment through a survey where groups were randomized into either covert/overt and either high personalized ad/low personalized ad display. We then proceeded to ask questions about how intrusive they found the ad, their privacy concern, their ITP and how they would distribute responsibility of data collection (cookies).
None of our hypotheses were fully supported, however, we did find significant differences between groups. Intrusiveness was highest amongst people being exposed to highly personalized ads, people who held the SoMe platform more responsible had a significant linear regression with privacy concern.
Through our research, we found the social media platform was assigned more responsibility by consumers for the use of cookies. Self-regulation of social media platforms and advertisers does not seem like a viable option to ensure consumers privacy and trust at this point in time, as most consumers lack education about online advertising and data collection. Instead, regulation from the government is needed to keep consumers from being exploited for their personal data | en_US |
