Special Session: Digital Data, Security, and Platform Design: Is Marketing the Problem or Solution? An Abstract

Increasing awareness about the best practice concerning how a firm should handle customer data, security, and privacy, and the risks of too much time spent on social media are increasingly showing up in the popular press (e.g., Johnson 2018; Ward 2018). Companies are beginning to realize that consumers are more informed about the data economy and the tacit transactions we have all entered into that involve the exchange of our data for free services. There is also an increased realization that companies must do more to protect consumer data and oblige explicit permissions for transmission, use, and sharing of consumer data. There is also notable work within scholarship exploring the landscape of consumer data, privacy, and platform issues (e.g., Martin 2016; Ferrell 2017; Baccarella et al. 2018). However, these conversations are just now being explored in various streams of research and application. There is sense in which the marketing academy needs to have more timely and relevant discussions on these issues and how they are and will impact our discipline.

The purpose of this special session is to explore the impact of this quickly changing environment and how marketing scholars can and should address these changes in the context of research streams, classroom and pedagogy, and interaction and impact with business partners.