How privacy shapes retailers and the retail market

Even less is known about how companies should act strategically to meet privacy requirements while achieving relevant and value-creating personalized digital marketing: What strategies can retailers use to alleviate the tension in customer data? In what ways can personalization be worked with that also respects customers' privacy?

The project combines workshops and case studies. In the first step, retailers and experts in law, personalization, and digital marketing gather in a workshop to explore practical, knowledge-based, and strategic challenges together. The workshop is an opportunity for all participants in the project to jointly explore strategic needs and relevant questions that inform and specify the focus in the case study. In the second step, a multiple case study is conducted in the form of interviews with Swedish retailers with the aim of mapping a breadth of experiences, viewpoints, and practical responses to better understand how companies are individually shaped, but also how the market is affected and responds with new solutions. The case studies explore a breadth of experiences, competencies, and systems that companies engage in as a response to a market where regulations and conflicts of interest arise from the collection and use of customer data. Through the case studies, we achieve a deeper and broader understanding of how the retail market and individual companies respond strategically and operationally, and thereby can generate recommendations adapted to the reality in which retailers operate. In a third step, a workshop is organized that once again gathers retailers and experts, who together with the researchers use the results of the case study and a mapping of solutions on the market to iterate strategic opportunities and practical recommendations for individual retailers, both large and small. In this final workshop, market-shaping strategy theory is applied to iterate a strategic program that will help retailers better comply with laws that protect consumer privacy, while also continuing with personalized digital marketing and better understanding how the market continues to be shaped by legal requirements and technical opportunities for data collection.