Privacy a Hot Topic at Place 2013 Indoor Marketing Conference, ITworld Reports

On the heels of this week’s Place 2013 Indoor Marketing Conference in San Francisco, ITworld has published a piece called ‘How location tracking will change the way you shop.’ Location tracking has become a key issue for FPF, and we were really pleased that privacy was a big part of the conversation at the conference, and the ITworld article. Our director Jules Polonetsky is quoted in the article emphasizing the need for company transparency, but also that retailers ought to promote the benefits of data gathering to their customers:

‘Companies need to be transparent about what they’re doing and why, said Jules Polonetsky, executive director and co-chairman at the Future of Privacy Forum.

“We’re never going to convince consumers that they should love data exchanges or marketing,” he said. But instead of burying their data gathering in a long privacy policy, retailers should promote the types of benefits Amazon offers with its recommendations, Polonetsky said, and tell customers, “We recommended this to you because you liked such and such.”‘

Location tracking creates so many possibilities to improve the consumer experience, and we’re hopeful that — if done right — these need not come at the cost of transparent and responsible data gathering.

Read the rest of the article at ITworld.