Privacy vs. Convenience: A New-Age Marketing Dilemma
By: Laurie Bredenfoerder
Over my years as a qualitative marketer, I’ve often gone online to research therapeutic categories within which I would be conducting research. Not long after, I could count on seeing a pretty dramatic uptick in emails and targeted online ads offering opportunities to enroll in patient support groups or get answers for my questions about living with the disease I’d been researching. It was easy to smile away these “opportunities” as well-intentioned attempts to be helpful - until the time I needed to prepare for a project on incontinence…then, all those messages started feeling personal.
Frankly, from the perspective of the marketer, this tradeoff makes good sense. What could be objectionable about providing targeted, relevant, disease-specific information in exchange for the address or phone number of a person who appears to have the potential to become a customer? ….Unless she doesn’t, and won’t.
The experience came back to mind recently when I heard a speaker from a large, US-based pharmacy chain describe the way their pharmacists successfully executed a company initiative: to collect contact information from customers who had prescriptions filled. Initially, the pharmacists were told to ask their customers to supply contact information electively and without much explanation. Customer buy-in was tepid, so eventually the company re-thought its approach. Now, instead of asking for the patient’s information essentially, in isolation – they offered the customer an opportunity to opt-in to receive a text when their prescription was ready for pickup. This small change not only accomplished the pharmacists’ original goal of collecting customer contact information; it also resulted in a dramatic decrease in calls coming into the pharmacy which saved both the pharmacies – and their customers – significant time.
So, yes, absolutely: marketing tactics have the potential to provide mutual benefit, even ones that are up-front about having a “hook. For instance, many large consumer retail companies operate best-customer programs: exclusive coupons and opportunities to access deep discounts for members of the program – but these are only available if you use the coupons in combination with the retailer’s branded credit card. Dazzled by the “exclusiveness” and the discounts, I happily bought into the terms of one of these programs, until I was on the receiving end of the branded credit card’s crazy-high leading-interest charges. That credit card has not left the drawer since the day I paid it off…28 days early!
Given a world where privacy vs. convenience choices are becoming commonplace, it’s not practical or possible to avoid making them. However, there is a bit of good news: the choice we make is still – for now at least – our own.
About the Author: Laurie Bredenfoerder, MBA, PRC is a veteran independent qualitative market research consultant based in Cincinnati, Ohio. She holds a B.S. in Journalism from Bowling Green State University, an MBA from Xavier University, and a Professional Researcher Certification from the Insights Association. Laurie is a board member of the Insights Association’s Great Lakes Chapter, a national committee chairperson for the Qualitative Research Consultants Association, a wife, and a proud mother of a wonderful son. Reach her by email: bvalley@fuse.net.