| This dissertation research investigates how consumers respond to being targeted, in particular how they edit their disclosure of identifying information to marketers, when they are aware marketers will use their information to make future targeting decisions. Marketers use information from and about consumers to target marketing resources towards interactions with more profitable consumers and away from less profitable ones. The explosion of new information technologies and growing strategic focus on customer relationship management have increased marketers' opportunities and incentives for finer targeting decisions. However this finer targeting can raise privacy concerns, leading some consumers to shield, screen or otherwise disclose inaccurate information. This disclosure editing by consumers reduces the efficacy of targeting decisions, and thus the return on marketing investments.; The field research and three progressive experimental studies in this dissertation develop and test a new theoretical model of consumer information disclosure. Integrating research in privacy, survey response and interpersonal lying, I propose the relative alignment of consumer and marketer interests in future interaction affects two underlying consumer privacy incentives, which in turn leads to systematic variation in disclosure accuracy. I further propose and show that enabling consumers to volunteer some information (opt-in to disclosure), while resulting in less information collected, generates more useful information overall.; I focus on an interaction context, new customer lead generation, where much of marketers' targeting information is explicitly disclosed by consumers. Because consumers recognize marketers use this information for follow-up, deliberate disclosure editing is likely in this context. Marketers also identify it as having high rates of inaccurate disclosure. I describe the process and challenge of lead generation in the discussion of my field research. An initial exploratory experiment finds willingness to accurately disclose varies in two dimensions, labeled "access" and "profile". The second and third experiments, using a financial services scenario, find that actual disclosure accuracy varied as predicted by the model when disclosure is required, and that the ability to opt-in changed disclosure accuracy as predicted. Finally, a business-to-business simulation in the online world Second Life, is suggested as method to extend these tests and address specific challenges for studying strategic disclosure. |
