Big Brother 1994: Marketing Data and the IRS

Abstract

Marketers need to be alert to the threat to important facets of their information gathering and processing activities that will arise from the increasing perception of the need to exercise enhanced vigilance to protect privacy in the face of the computer revolution. Marketing practitioners and marketing scholars are data hungry, and the advances in electronic data collection and management techniques enable them to satisfy this hunger as never before. At the same time, the intrusive potential of these same techniques can make those who supply information increasingly wary about possible undesirable uses of any information they may provide. A dramatic illustration of the problem is the recent decision by the Internal Revenue Service to purchase from a private market research firm the mailing lists developed by that firm for commercial purposes.