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Impact of Social Media on Consumer Attitude Towards Privacy
Kuan-Pin Chiang

Last modified: 2018-10-03

Abstract


Social media has provided tools to consumers to engage in social interaction on the Internet. A study by Pew Research Center estimated that about 69% of US adults use social media. Consumers use social media to share content and to network with others. As social media become part of consumers’ life, studies have shown that consumers are concerned about their personal information. A 2014 survey by Pew Research Center found that 91% of respondents “agree†or “strongly agree†that people have lost control over how personal information is collected and used. Some 80% of social media users said they were concerned about businesses accessing the data they share on social media. Another survey in 2017 found that about half of users were not at all or not too confident their data were in safe hands. In a longitudinal study, Kelly et al. (2017) found that although consumers tend to trust social media sites to protect their private information, they don’t trust advertising or brands on the sties. Their findings suggest that overtime consumers have “felt their social life was more important than their privacy concerns.†Potentially, there is a trade-off between growing use of social media and privacy concerns. Therefore, this study seeks to explore the influence of social media on consumer attitude towards privacy.


Keywords


Consumer privacy; Social media marketing