The Retailer Summer Edition 2022

THE RE TA I L ER

50

NEW RESEARCH HIGHLIGHTS GEN Z CONSUMER ATTITUDES ON DATA PRIVACY

Liesl Smith Senior Vice President Marketing & Sales Enablement FreedomPay

G en Z consumers are more willing to share biometric info than details from their social media accounts with retailers. Anew report from payments platform FreedomPay and Cornell University has found that young consumers are more likely to share personal details if they received a reward in exchange for their data. The effectiveness of this tactic, however, was dependent on the perceived importance of the data. The report has helped uncover valuable insights about Gen Z and how they think about data and their threshold for sharing it. Gen Z are more reluctant to share personal data with third parties than Millennials are, making it harder for retailers to collect their customer data. While they are privacy-oriented and have clear priorities on what information they wish to share, there are also clear opportunities for retailers and merchants to reach these consumers with the right mix of promotions.

The research is based on a survey of 200 Cornell University Gen Z stu dents, defined as those born in 1995 or later. Data privacy is increasingly top of mind for both regulators and consumers, with more government policies addressing data tracking and sharing. Survey participants were first asked about their willingness to share 15 different data types, on a scale of one to six from "very unlikely to share" to "very likely to share." These data items were then sorted by low, medium, and high privacy levels. For instance, gender, name, and agewere perceived to have a lowprivacy level, with an average willingness to share above 5.0. Respondents were also more willing to share their email addresses than phone numbers, with an average willingness of 4.76 to 4.04, although both ranked low on the privacy scale.

Privacy Level

Data Items

Average Willingness

Gender

5.24 5.09 5.09 4.76 4.59 4.04 3.40 3.36 3.31 3.03 2.91 2.78 1.95 1.74 1.71

Name

Age

Low

Email Address Date of Birth Phone Number

Shopping Preference Shopping History

Biometrics

Medium

Expected Monthly Expense

Income

Social Media Account

GPS Location

High

Social Security Number

Medical Record