I came across an interesting article this morning, “FTC forces Sears, Kmart out of the spyware business“.
Curious to hear what fellow market researchers think. They obviously went overboard with the level of info collected. I also wonder which departments were involved. If this was only an IT or vendor related initiative or if market research was involved as well.
While it’s bad press for these companies, and for MR industry overall, I do think some of this information is key to Next Gen Market Research. But it needs to be done responsibly.
While we can never expect ESOMAR, CASRO, MRA etc. to catch up to next gen research initiatives, I do think we can try to follow the spirit of our current guidelines/codes.
I also feel strongly that market research is better positioned to both leverage this type of data and to do so responsibly. Unfortunately as long as many market researchers continue to just work with more traditional insight methods, other departments with less experience in responsible data collection and actionable consumer insight analysis will continue to lead this exploration into new techniques.
That would be a shame.
@TomHCAnderson
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5 responses so far ↓
1 Brian LoCicero // Sep 14, 2009 at 11:12 am
I think this is going to be an interesting topic to keep watching.
I believe that both comScore and Nielsen do the same to collect their info, no? ResearchWare doesn’t equal spyware in that respondents are supposedly giving their opt-in permission, but will the legal system push against caveat emptor and keep enforce caveat venditor across the board?
2 tina // Sep 14, 2009 at 11:56 am
thanks for sharing this, tom. i’ve never seen anything from sears / kmart about what they actually did with the data they were collecting. have you?
3 Tom H C Anderson // Sep 14, 2009 at 4:47 pm
@Brian, Yes, I know ComScore has been flagged as spyware by many ISPs/virus protection software.
@tina No, but its on my to do list to look into this a bit more. Would be interesting to see if any ‘insiders’ read this and have any additional info…
4 links for 2009-09-15 « burningCat // Sep 15, 2009 at 4:07 am
[...] Should Market Researchers be in the Spyware Business? [...]
5 Martin Calle // Sep 16, 2009 at 3:40 am
I’ve pushed far into non-traditional research techniques developing high impact insights for consumer packaged goods clients by delving into spyware and malware concepts. For example, our firm has been first to Socially Engineer® products and concepts for the invention or reinvention of brands. Along the way we’ve learned that not only does this process directly change consumer habits and practices, attitudes and behavior on large scales, it also diminishes what the computer industry calls “kill bits”. Kill bits® are routines that disrupt programs. The kill bits we disable are those inconsumer packaged goods industries that depress consumer response to advertising, marketing and branding as a means to raise and sustain a brand’s higher level of Social Influence. We have plenty of examples on brands such as Pampers, Folgers, Tylenol and others.
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