The value required to negate consumer privacy concerns around location

Abstract

Privacy has been discussed throughout the ages as the world has developed and changed however privacy concerns have been reignited by the development of technology. One of these technologies, Location Based Services (LBS), together with how organisations are using these technologies is pushing the consumers’ privacy boundaries. In order for this technology to become widely adopted these privacy concerns need to be understood and addressed. It is therefore the purpose of this research to examine whether consumers’ privacy concern can be negated through consumers receiving a benefit which caused them to forego this concern.The research used scenarios to evaluate consumers’ comfort levels for four different intrusion levels and five different discounts offered. Due to the nature of the scenarios a repeated measures ANOVA design was used in order to allow for the analysis of each of the scenarios, intrusion levels and discount offered for each respondent.It was found that although privacy concerns can and were influenced by the offers made to the respondents, consumers have not yet gained a complete sense of comfort with the privacy boundaries that are being challenged.