Study Weighs Privacy Concerns Against Relevant Offers for Mobile Shoppers, Reports MediaPost

Yesterday, MediaPost reported a study by IDC that provided an interesting insight on how smartphone users value their privacy in retail environments. According to MediaPost:

“Smartphone owners were asked which was more important: retailers respecting their privacy or retailers presenting them with relevant offers.

The results were essentially split, with slightly more than half (53%) saying retailers respecting their privacy was more important and almost half (47%) saying presenting relevant offers matters more.”

This almost even split demonstrates the importance of transparency and choice when it comes to retailers using their customer’s smartphone data. We’ve been testing our mobile location analytics opt-out mechanism for precisely this reason: so that customers can decide for themselves whether they wish to opt out of tracking, or avail themselves of the valuable offers and discounts that individual shopper targeting allows.