Privacy Challenges in Marketing Practices: European (Over)Ruling of the Use of Personal Data?*.

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Privacy Challenges in Marketing Practices: European (Over)Ruling of the Use of Personal Data?*.

Article by Felix Hofer1,2

1. In order to promote their products and services effectively marketers need extensive information about the subjects they're dealing with or they'd like to target for future business. Technical progress requires such information to be more and more sophisticated: in order to perform a successful campaign it's crucial to know as much as possible and in detail about targeted companies, individuals, categories, industry sectors, shopping habits, consumer profiles, gender, race, age, location, financial capacity and health conditions.

That's the reason why nowadays 'data' has become the most valuable 'raw material' in the modern economy. That is also the reason why marketers' techniques for approaching target subjects have become extremely complex and rely on top level technology.

Marketers' business nowadays involves practices such as behavioral-, contextual-, location- and mobile marketing; it extends way beyond (earlier) traditional media, reaching out to the on-line communities (virtual worlds, social networks, blogs, discussion forums, etc.) and makes use of advanced technological tools - especially in the area of neuromarketing - such as Radio Frequency Identification (RFID), Functional Magnetic Resonance Imaging (fMRI), Steady State Topography (SST), Facial Coding and Galvanic Skin Response3. And yes, cookies are still immensely popular and widely used.

2. Practices that dwell so deep into an individual's personal sphere, do monitor his habits and profile many aspects of his personality, are also capable to cause data subject's annoyance and opposition.

More and more frequently we find reports in the news - both in Europe as well as in other geographic regions around the world...

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