Opinions on Direct Marketing Graphs
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 (4.44 Scale: 1 disagree 3 neutral 5 agree). This characteristic is unchanged from the Sixth Survey (4.43). Less agreement was found for the statement that the collection of demographic information helps improve the marketing of WWW sites (3.44 Seventh vs. 3.46 Sixth).
- 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 (a.k.a. junk mail) (2.18 Seventh vs. 2.30 Sixth), users are even more opposed to receiving mass emailings (1.58 Seventh vs. 1.69 Sixth). Likewise, while users tend not agree that magazines have the right to resell collected demographic information (1.96 Seventh vs. 2.07 Sixth), they disagree more with respect to WWW sites reselling demographic information (1.83 Seventh vs. 1.76 Sixth). This indicates a separate distinction between what's acceptable in each medium 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 as well as between the Sixth and Seventh Surveys.
- The recent advent of networks specifically designed to collect individual usage information across sites is not well supported by users, with sentiment for the existence of such networks being highly negative (1.83). This
is the first survey this question was asked.
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