Personalization and Responsibility In Marketing and Ethics
Research by McKinsey states that marketing is the field where AI will contribute greatest value, for example with personalization. This radically changes the stakeholder field in which marketers operate when using personalization algorithms, by working together with data scienstis, AI-architects and data engineers more often. This research focuses on the question which guidelines for marketers are required to come to a responsible personalization practice.
Objective
This interdisciplinary research draws insights from human-computer interaction, marketing, consumer studies and (business) ethics to develop an assessment framework that helps marketers navigate the dilemmas they face when using personalization algorithms in their daily work.
Results
- An overview of different typologies for different moral attitudes of different types of marketers
- Both qualitative and quantitative insights into how consumers weigh the costs and benefits of personalization
- A normative assessment framework that defines different responsibilities of different stakeholders across phases in the customer journey
Duration
01 April 2025 - 01 April 2029
Approach
To create a normative assessment framework, different perspectives are considered:
- The marketer: which dilemmas do they face, to what extent do they feel supported by current legal or organizational guidelines, and which frameworks are needed for different types of marketers?
- The customer: what data are customers willing to share? When does personalization become intrusive? What risks are they aware of?
- The organization: which stakeholder (e.g. AI-strategist, data scientist, privacy officer
