The opportunities that marketers are provided with in cyberspace have led them to seek means to facilitate a two-way communication with consumers aiming at building a relationship of trust with them. Given that marketing is much broader than selling as it encompasses the entire business seen from the point of view of its final result, that is, from the customer\u2019s point of view, the ability of marketers to glean the types of information needed often depends on consumer\u2019s willingness to volunteer such information.<\/p>\n
This essay aims to examine to what extent consumers\u2019 behaviour in cyberspace differs from the \u2018real-world\u2019 behaviour and whether concerns about privacy as well as scepticism about how marketers use data prevent consumers from disclosing personal information. The fact that marketing is based on the study of the psychological characteristics of consumers who engage in voluntary self-disclosure, combined with the application of psychological theories and techniques to marketing, indicate the close relationship between these two disciplines.<\/p>\n
In order to unfold the different approaches on the abovementioned issue, I decided to first get myself familiar with the basic concepts and techniques of psychology. Psychology is both an applied and academic field that studies the human mind and behaviour. Research in psychology seeks to describe human thought and behaviour, explain why these behaviours occur, predict how, why and when these behaviours will occur again in the future and modify and improve behaviours to better the lives of individuals and society as a whole. There are three types of research methods, causal, descriptive and rational, while psychologists use a range of techniques including naturalistic observation, experiments, case studies and questionnaires. Topics and questions in psychology can be looked at in a number of different ways; some of the major perspectives in psychology include the biological, cognitive, behavioural, evolutionary, humanistic perspective.<\/p>\n
Given that the web has created a new type of society where the presence of other human beings is implied rather than actual, I particularly focused my interest on the discipline of Social Psychology which aims to understand and explain the impact of the social environment on the thought, feeling and behaviour of individuals. A basic concept of social psychology that describes our everyday interactions is the concept of self-disclosure which is defined as \u2018the voluntary making available of information about one\u2019s self that would not ordinarily be accessible to the other at that moment.\u2019<\/p>\n
Self-disclosure has received considerable attention from consumer psychologists as it plays a vital role in relationship development and maintenance. Although self-disclosure research has shown that people are reluctant to divulge information about themselves, one notable exception to this rule involves the norm of reciprocity which refers to the tendency for recipients to match the level of intimacy in the disclosure they return with the level of intimacy in the disclosure they receive; people are more likely to engage in self-disclosure if they first become the recipients of such disclosures from their conversational partners. A few researchers have suggested that consumers interact with the source of electronic communications in the same way they interact with other people; therefore reciprocity could make consumers more involved in self-disclosure even in cyberspace. Thus, theoretically, in order to trigger the reciprocity principle, a company would first have to reveal some information about itself to the consumer.<\/p>\n
<\/p>\n
Botha, B., Strydom, J., Brink, A. (2004) Introduction to Marketing.<\/em> South Africa: Juta and Co Ltd<\/p>\n Cialdini, R. B. (1993). Influence: Science and practice<\/em>. New York: HarperCollins.<\/p>\n Derlega,V. J.,& Chaikin, A. L. (1977). \u2018Privacy and self-disclosure in social relationships\u2019. Journal of Social Issues<\/em>, 33, pp. 102\u2013115<\/p>\n Gross, R. (2010) Psychology: The Science of Mind and Behaviour<\/em>. London: Hodder Education<\/p>\n Hill, C. T., & Stull, D. E. (1982). \u2018Disclosure reciprocity: Conceptual and measurement<\/p>\n Issues\u2019. Social Psychology Quarterly, 45, pp. 238-244<\/p>\n Holtgraves,T. (1990). The language of self-disclosure<\/em>. In H. Giles & W. P. Robinson (Eds.),\u00a0Handbook of language and social psychology. Chichester, U.K.: John Wiley<\/p>\n Joinson, A.N. (2001). \u2018Self-disclosure in computer-mediated communication: The role of selfawareness and visual anonymity\u2019. European Journal of Social Psychology<\/em>, 31, pp. 177\u2013192<\/p>\n <\/p>\n <\/p>\n <\/p>\n <\/p>\n <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" The opportunities that marketers are provided with in cyberspace have led them to seek means to facilitate a two-way communication with consumers aiming at building a relationship of trust with them. Given that marketing is much broader than selling as it encompasses the entire business seen from the point of view of its final result, […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":92991,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[263,1],"tags":[17951,272,644767,16582,228],"class_list":["post-1649","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-psychology","category-uncategorized","tag-marketing","tag-privacy","tag-psychology","tag-self-disclosure","tag-web"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/blog.soton.ac.uk\/comp6044\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1649","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/blog.soton.ac.uk\/comp6044\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/blog.soton.ac.uk\/comp6044\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blog.soton.ac.uk\/comp6044\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/92991"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blog.soton.ac.uk\/comp6044\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1649"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/blog.soton.ac.uk\/comp6044\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1649\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":1651,"href":"https:\/\/blog.soton.ac.uk\/comp6044\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1649\/revisions\/1651"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/blog.soton.ac.uk\/comp6044\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1649"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blog.soton.ac.uk\/comp6044\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1649"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blog.soton.ac.uk\/comp6044\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1649"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}