Opinions Of Direct Marketing
Notes:
- The revealing of demographic information and the subsequent use of the information for
direct marketing is currently a hot issue on the Web and one that will remain so for a while
it seems. There is very little deviation of response by people on the issue of who ought to
have complete control over their demographic information -- most strongly agreed that they
ought to control their demographic information (4.43). Less agreement was found for the
statement that the collection of demographic information helps improve the marketing of
sites (3.46). In order to gain an understanding of how the online medium differs from
print, we asked users statements about each medium. While users tend not to like receiving
mass postal mailings (aka junk-mail) (2.30), users were even more opposed to receiving
mass emailings (1.69). Likewise, while users tend not agree that magazines have the right to resell
collected demographic information (2.07), they disagree more so with respect to WWW sites reselling
demographic information (1.76). This indicates a separate distinction between what's acceptable
in each mediums by the users. The notion that people like to receive targeted marketing material,
is not supported by the data, regardless of the medium. There is high agreement on these issues
across strata.
For more information or to submit comments:
send e-mail to www-survey@cc.gatech.edu.
GVU's WWW Surveying Team
Graphics, Visualization, & Usability Center
College of Computing
Georgia Institute of Technology
Atlanta, GA 30332-0280