On first sight, the development of online purchasing brought advantages to all parties included. Sellers have the chance to sell their products to a larger crowd and reduced the reliance on brick-and-mortar stores which require high rents. The buyers had more offers and could easily navigate between the offers to compare prices and get the best deal.
However, the impacts of digital marketing and purchasing on consumer behaviour are yet to be completely analysed. Current research suggests, that humans appear to be way more vulnerable to hidden traps, trying to pull individuals into a purchasing decision, than previously believed. The process of pushing consumers subconsciously into a certain decision is known as digital nudging.
This can take many forms. It can come in the shape of making incentives more prominent, presenting certain information in more comprehensive ways than others, or making certain options the default (Weinmann et al., 2016). The latter is prominently used in the financial and insurance industry, where certain plans are pre-selected and need active user input to un-select. Social media networks also use digital nudges by rewarding sharing behaviour with incentives like badges or a certain status (Weinmann et al., 2016).
Digital nudging can have positive and negative implications (Weinmann et al., 2016). By setting the default option to donating organs in case of an accident, Johnson and Goldstein showed that nearly double the amount of individuals selected to donate organs (Johnson et al., 2003). On the other side, this means, that companies can exploit the apparent subconscious decision making of consumers. This raises severe ethical questions, as to what should be allowed and what not.
Currently, the situation as to how to regulate this is still rather blurry. Howells argues in his paper that most mainstream consumer transactions which are carried out online can be taken care of, through the usage and adaptation of current legal principles (Howells, 2019). However, he does stress the importance of acting upon the situation. Otherwise, any institution would have the potential to exploit consumers through the usage of web design features, luring consumers into purchasing decisions.
Beyond that, the applicability of those features does not stop. What about social media networks? Do platforms like Facebook or Twitter use these features to increase the user’s dependence on the platforms? Are there hidden effects which are yet to be discovered?
Bibliography:
Howells, G. (2019) “Protecting Consumer Protection Values in the Fourth Industrial Revolution,”Journal of Consumer Policy : Consumer Issues in Law, Economics and Behavioural Sciences, 43(1), pp. 145–175. doi: 10.1007/s10603-019-09430-3.
Johnson E.J., Goldstein D., (2003) Do defaults save lives? Science 5649(302):1338–1339
Weinmann, M., Schneider, C. and Brocke, J. V. (2016) “Digital Nudging,”Business & Information Systems Engineering, 58(6), pp. 433–436. doi: 10.1007/s12599-016-0453-1.
