Business Ethics in Marketing and Consumer Protection

Management and Commerce

AI-enabled marketing has become quite proficient in terms of forecasting customers' buying needs even before the customers recognize them as their own. The present paper focuses on where this technology turns into an element of persuasion rather than personalized service, thus raising a question on the need for further development of consumer protection legislation. The literature review of the current regulatory approach (GDPR and other consumer laws) was combined with the survey analysis of 150 digital consumers regarding their perception of such practices. It is clear now that most of them experience the sensation of manipulation when exposed to predictive marketing and lose their confidence rapidly once discovering the scale of information gathered and processed. Moreover, the current regulations do not seem to address the issue appropriately either – they do not keep up with the capabilities of predictive AI technology. Based on all of this, the present paper suggests a framework of 'corporate digital responsibility' (CDR), which could be interpreted as recommendations for businesses to reveal the truth about data collection and processing.

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