Consumer Privacy in New Media: A Study of University Students in Turkey

With the advent of digitization, consumer privacy and personal data protection in new media have arisen as new consumer rights issues. As message effectiveness has emerged as an issue in marketing communications, so has targeting the right consumers with the most appropriate messages become a common goal for marketers. However, targeting may result in some unethical practices such as tracking consumers’ web surfing patterns and using and selling their personal data without permission. As university students constitute one of the most active groups in new media, this study focuses on how they perceived consumer privacy, how deliberative they were during their online shopping activities and to what extent they were aware of the risk of providing personal data, particularly through social media, and its consequences. Analysis of transcripts from semi-structured in-depth interviews revealed themes of concern about online shopping and data protection, the effects of social media on perception of privacy, “check-in” on social media, experiences related to privacy breaches, and attitudes towards consumer privacy and marketing activities in new media. The findings and implications of the research are discussed, and suggestions for further study are presented at the end of the study. DOI: 10.5901/mjss.2015.v6n2p588