Understanding control and transparency in consumer data privacy

Data-driven marketing provides consumers personalized offerings, but it also makes them feel vulnerable about their privacy. Viewing through the lens of gossip theory, control and transparency are the key suppressors of consumer vulnerability. However, conceptualizations of transparency and control are rarely subject to critical scrutiny and thus their dimensions remain unclear. Previous studies conceptualize control and transparency from rationalistic approaches that overlook individual experience and present a unidimensional description that does not adequately represent the complexity of the conceptualization of these constructs. To fill these research gaps, our research adopts an interpretative approach and a phenomenological research design. Data were collected through 41 semi-structured interviews and analysed through thematic analysis. The findings identify three conceptual dimensions of control: autonomy, easiness, and awareness. Transparency is conceptualized as integrity of information, understandability of communication, and proactivity of data management practices. This research contributes to gossip theory in the consumer data privacy literature.