The Chair of Marketing and Innovation (Prof. Dr. Jan H. Schumann) and the Chair of Information Systems with a focus on Business Information Systems (Prof. Dr. Thomas Widjaja) are jointly researching a project funded by the DFG. Under the project name "Beyond the Dyad: The Effects of Data Exchange in Enterprise Networks on the Privacy Calculus", they are looking at the effects of data exchange in enterprise networks on consumers' data disclosure decisions.
Current technologies enable the collection, storage and analysis of consumer data on an unprecedented scale. As a result, they enable new business models that go beyond the consumer-company dyad and are based on the collection and trading of consumer data in corporate networks. For example, the music streaming service Spotify uses user data in a corporate network of advertisers, concert providers and other third-party companies. But traditional industries, such as the automotive and aviation industries, as well as the retail sector, are also increasingly developing business models together with technology companies that are based on the exchange and monetization of consumer data.
Based on the assumption of a dyadic view, previous research explains consumers' data disclosure decisions mainly with the "privacy calculus", which assumes a rational risk-benefit trade-off. However, an exclusively rational approach is not sufficient in the BNDE context because consumers face a high degree of uncertainty when data is disclosed to an entire network of unknown companies. Because of this uncertainty, consumers in the BNDE context cannot rely only on a rational, cognitive cost-benefit consideration. "Spontaneous affective reactions to such business models, or - to put it simply - gut feelings, are thus likely to play a major role in decision-making," explains Jan H. Schumann, holder of the Chair of Business Administration with a focus on marketing and innovation at the University of Passau. Thus, when explaining consumer decisions about data disclosure to a network of companies, the established privacy calculus theory reaches its limits and needs to be extended from a dyadic perspective to a network perspective. "With our research, we aim to better understand how exactly the decision-making process occurs, what drives it, and how such business models need to be designed and communicated so that consumers are able to make better decisions and also help companies to design their BNDE networks in such a way that they are accepted by their clients," - adds Thomas Widjaja, Chair of Information Systems with a focus on Business Information Systems.
