These days many of us are concern about our privacy. It seems we want to keep the information about ourselves to ourselves. People tend to get defensive, mad, and even upset over the wanting of our personal information. I take the opposite approach. Marketing is companies trying to understand you and trying to get you to engage with them. The hope is, this engagement makes them money on a product or service they are providing. People feel some companies are manipulating or taking advantage of them. I understand this but take a unconventional look at it. I feel as a consumer I should let the marketers engage with me so I get a better unaggressive, experience. This openness on my approach lets the marketing giant understand me better and in turn engage with me better. This provides lots of advantages for me as well.
If a car manufacture has research that it's customers like red cars, so they make red vehicles. You as a consumer may like red as the car research suggests, but it turns out in this example you prefer a deep dark red, burgundy. This is not the bright fire engine red that the manufacture made. If people could be more open with there information it would have saved the car company money and saved you some frustration. You would be happier. You would get the car colour you wanted. Not the car colour you kind of wanted do to your lack of openness on who you are and what your likes and dislikes are. This is a hypothetical that I hope demonstrates my point.
The perfect example of this is with the data Netflix collects on people that use their service. Some feel this is an invasion of privacy and should not be allowed. Their research shows that many viewers like political dramas, and government dramas. Viewers also like and watch movies with Kevin Spacy and Robin Wright in them. So Netflix goes to these actors and make a show based on a political government drama. The public gets a great show called House of Cards. They do not get a show maybe with Kevin Spacy in a political comedy or Robin Wright in a government medical show. The people get the perfect show based on the openness of the data that Netflix was able to collect.
I am not saying open the fluid gates and give up all our information. Banking info and other security style personal info should be, just that, personal. Still consider the next time you get a survey on some crazy thing you think is silly, fill it out. They take only minutes and allow companies the ability to give us more of what we want. This creates a win win situation. Be careful, but opening up some of our internet searching habits may not be as damaging as we may think. Many browsers have tools to hide your surfing and we should use them when entering banking sites for added security. Remember to turn them off again so you do not louse features of your browser and effect your experience. Also keeping open internet use can allow sites to get your info to better their site, including products and services.
Let me know your thoughts on the issue of privacy and if you will be more open in the future. Looking forward to your comments.
