••• data privacy
Companies increase consent collection but lack compliance knowledge
A survey by PossibleNOW, a provider of enterprise consent and preference management solutions, found a 26 percent increase in businesses utilizing consent collection from 2018 to 2019. Last year, just 38 percent of companies reported collecting consumer consent. Another 31 percent reported they weren’t sure if they were collecting this information.
This year, 64 percent reported actively collecting consumer consent, while 28 percent remained unsure. Consent management provides a company the ability to continue its marketing efforts toward its customers in an environment of increasing regulatory laws such as GDPR and CCPA.
When asked about GDPR compliance, 24 percent of respondents reported compliance in 2018. When respondents were asked the same question in 2019, only an additional 3 percent reported they were compliant.
Companies were further asked which GDPR requirements they found most challenging. Forty-four percent of respondents said that “right to access” laws such as providing customers a copy of their personal data and the purpose for processing that data were most challenging. Another 33.3 percent reported that consent management such as capturing, storing and distributing consent across the company created confusion. While companies report their consent collection has increased, confusion around management of this data also increased.
••• shopper insights
Online reviews exert powerful influence on choice
What’s the most important source of information when choosing a service or professional? According to the 2019 edition of an annual survey by ReviewInc. of over 20,000 U.S. consumers, online reviews have the most influence.
The latest report shows that among choices such as media advertising (5.9 percent), online ads (8.4 percent), traditional Yellow Pages (10.3 percent), a company’s Web site (19.7 percent), referral or word of mouth (9.2 percent) and “other” (2.0 percent), entries on Google, Facebook, Yelp and other sites that allow users to leave reviews dominated, with 44.5 percent of the claimed purchase decision influence. (Each respondent was provided with a multiple-choice list from which they could only chose one answer.)
The survey found that women (48.2 percent) are more likely to rely on review sites than men (43.2 percent). This difference of 5 percent has been consistent over the past five years. It is also notable that the influence between age groups has shifted, with the biggest drop in claimed influence of online reviews occurring in respondents between the ages of 18-24 (from 51.1 percent in 2017 down to 48.3 percent influence in 2019) – suggesting trends favoring social media rather than traditional review sites.