The Power of Consumer Information

The Power of Consumer Information

Facial recognition software. Smart Phones. Google glass. Big Data. Our marketplace is changing dramatically as technological innovations become commercially viable. Correspondingly, employers demand new skills of our graduates. Many large firms have reduced their traditional marketing outlay in favor of digital marketing efforts as a way to cut expenses. In the last three years, Procter and Gamble, Sears and IBM made major cuts to their traditional marketing divisions claiming the primary reason was the “potency and power of online advertising”(Finn, MarketingLand.com, 2-1-2012). This shift to digital marketing has led to the emergence of Big Data as topic and trend. Big Data also brings big responsibility as its use “poses legitimate concerns and public policy questions”(Acxiom, 2012).

The technological innovations changing our marketplace and employers’needs demand curriculum changes to equip our students with appropriate knowledge and skills. Students in this informational economy are different, having grown up using technology with unprecedented access to information, which has changed the way they think. How much they have to remember is now influenced by their ease of access to search engines. They are referred to as “digital natives”(Prensky, 2001).

To meet the needs of these digital natives we created a new marketing course–Consumer Information in the Digital Age - that provides historical context for consumer informationin marketing, while addressing current issues and applications of such information. This course also incorporates the three types of privacy knowledge thatPeltier et al (2010) recommend: 1) knowledge of the regulatory environment, 2) knowledge of customer relationship management, and 3) knowledge of information and media channel context.

The goal of this course is to provide students with a clear view of the permanent nature of consumer information used in less-traditional marketing activities. The course enhances student understanding of how they, as consumers, can control the dissemination of their information as well as how they, as marketers, can find/utilize consumer information in an ethical manner. It provides students a macro perspective, incorporating the ethical concerns for potential negative consequences of information and technology (in keeping with the new information technology knowledge standard recently adopted by AACSB. See standard 9, general business and management knowledge areas).

Teaching digital native students the macro concepts is critical to shaping their perspective –“to place a field of study [marketing] into proper perspective”(Wilkie and Moore, 1999 p. 217). Students are bombarded with information on a minute-to-minute basis. In order to shape their perspective it is essential to guide them through material relevant to their experiences and to empower them to be active and ethical participants in the exchange of information. To assess the effectiveness of the assignments in the course in shaping this perspective we plan to utilize exploratory research techniques of surveys and reflection assignments with the twenty-three students enrolled. Our goal is to determine if the course topics, assignments and discussions will result in changes in the students’level of empowerment (their“connection between a sense of personal competence and a desire for and a willingness to take action in the public domain,”Rappaport, 1987) and their level of concern, trust and behavior with information on a social networking site.

Data was collected in the spring 2013semester and a preliminary examination of the qualitative data supports the notion of changes in students’competence and desire to take action. As an example, one student notes in a reflective assignment: "This course has offered me the ability to take an introspective look at the way I publish and distribute information about myself and I look forward to using my knowledge of this subject to shift this industry into the right direction."