Business Studies

Digital Marketing Topic 2 Q4 Analytics is often used in audience analysis and the development of personas designed to help marketers reach sweet spot customers. Discuss legal and ethical dilemmas marketers might encounter in the collection and use of analytics and provide a specific example to illustrate your ideas.

ANSWER

Legal and Ethical Issues in Data Analytics

For any successful company, data analytics is an integral part of identifying potential customers and gaining new ones by having a broader and effective perspective of what they need. Data analytics involves collecting data from the public and analyzing them to develop a good marketing strategy. Data analytics helps companies keep up with the ever-changing consumer behavior. However, various legal and ethical issues exist regarding the handling of these data. The ethics and privacy surrounding analytics is a problem that is generated by the lack of information given to the customers. Some companies fail to provide the consumers with the full information about why they are collecting the data, what the data will be used for, and who is collecting it. When these issues are not properly addressed, there are chances that organizations deviate from what is ethical. For instance, according to Nersessian, (2018), companies and consumers often have different perspectives on what is ethical. What an organization may think is ethical regarding handling these data may be a breach of privacy for the consumer. However, to draw a clear line on what is or is not ethical, there are laws regarding the handling of these crucial data.

The most infamous law in the United States regarding data protection is the California Online Privacy Protection Act (CalOPPA). The law states that every company should post on their websites their privacy policy or make the information public to any person involved in analytics (Nersessian, 2018). The privacy policy must entail, clearly, how users can access and change their information, how the consumers will be notified in case of any changes regarding the policy, and the “do not track” requests shall be handled by the operator. Such laws hence enable organizations to conduct analytics while maintaining ethical and law priorities.

References

Nersessian, D. (2018). The law and ethics of big data analytics: A new role for international human rights in the search for global standards. Business Horizons, 61(6), 845-854.