I recently came across a blog post that caught my eye, Creepy Coupons: Printed Web Coupons Can Contain Personal Information About You.  My first thought was, ‘of course they do, and?’.    The post is actually a reference to a New York Times report that delves into the fact that web coupons can contain lots of information about you in their bar code, ‘the bar codes can be loaded with a startling amount of data, including identification about the customer, Internet address, Facebook page information and even the search terms the customer used to find the coupon in the first place.’  The tone of both articles, along with most of the reader comments was the same … the community was not happy with this invasion of privacy.

With the growing interest in personalized content and experience combined with the ever growing public nature of the Social Web, I was a little surprised at first by what seemed like a contradiction in public action and reaction.  Here are some examples that ran though my mind as I contemplated this:

• An eMarketer study reported that consumers are willing to trade off privacy for personalization; 57 percent would provide personal demographic information in exchange for personalized content.   
• According to Forrester, 52% of consumers join loyalty programs to get discounts, however 61% admit that they are concerned with how companies use their personal data when they do join a loyalty program.
• February 4, 2010, Facebook passed the 400 million user mark.  This followed an announcement only 3 months earlier that stated Facebook implemented a change in their privacy settings to such that a member’s name, profile picture, gender, current city, networks, friends list and all subsribed pages, would now by default be publicly available information for everyone on the web to search and view.
• In January of 2010 the number of Twitter users climbed to 75 million and in February 2010, Twitter announced that the company is seeing 50 Million Tweets per day.
• It’s no secret that sharing personal information via Twitter , Google Buzz and Foursquare can expose you to risk.  A Dutch website PleaseRobMe attempted to throw the issue into the spotlight earlier this year.  The site was a stream of updates from various networks that provided minute by minute updates on when people left their homes and where they were currently located.  Privacy campaigners were outraged.
• A new social media sharing site, Blippy, launched earlier this year that allows users to share their shopping purchases with others.  Consumers enter their credit card numbers into the site, and any time they make a purchase with that credit card, it is shared on the site for other readers to see.  It has been described as the ‘Twitter of personal finance’

It’s clear that despite the global reach and public nature of the web, there is still an expectation of privacy and essentially respect.  When entering into social commerce then, there are a few goals to keep in mind:

• Transparency – ‘Do Not Call’ lists represent overwhelming sentiment that consumers do not like to be solicited to in the privacy of their own homes.  I personally have a local vacuum cleaner salesman that calls without fail every 3 months.  I am annoyed as soon as I pick up the phone and he launches into his speech … and that is not just because I don’t own a vacuum and there are no carpets in my house.  However, my reaction is entirely different when I pick up the phone and am greeted by a local retailer who after confirming who I am, continues with,  ‘This is retailer X, we’re calling because you asked to be informed of our sales events and I wanted to let you know that we are having one this Thursday … blah, blah, blah’.   The second experience is much more positive, as the retailer was very clear to identify me personally and then indicate why they were calling me at home.  There is clear indication that consumers want to be informed and have personal dialog with retailers, but it has to be transparent in both marketing and general retailing.  Providing product recommendations is another example of consumer dialog where transparency should be considered.  When recommending products to your customers be transparent on why you are recommending those items.  I don’t mind if a merchant recommends products because it’s a new item, an item  you think it fits within my preferences, a long-tail item that I just might not be aware of, or even an item with gads of inventory that is now being cleared out.  Knowing why it is being recommended, goes a long way to building openness and trust in the consumer/merchant relationship. 
• Value – It wasn’t that long ago that e-commerce was debated by merchants as a strategic direction to take or not.  In some cases, the overwhelming growth in consumer interest, even without a clear ROI, was enough of a reason.  However, e-commerce has since settled in and found real value for both merchants and consumers.  We’ve recently seen similar arguments for both mobile and social. While merchants debate when and how to engage with consumers through these networks, finding value will be the difference between a fad and a trend. A few examples have jumped out over the last year that do just that.   Jansport.com’s integration of Facebook into it’s onsite shopping experience allows shoppers to conveniently share product information and chat with friend’s right in context of the product detail pages.   This is a brilliant way to make what can be an overwhelming abundance of product reviews and ratings more meaningful to the individual shopper, as recommendations are even more impactful when coming from people you know and trust in your personal network.  There are various other examples such as Wehkamp.nl which allows it’s consumers to ‘shop with friends’ on their Live Messenger network.  The great thing about these examples is they’ve combined social and commerce in a very seamless experience that provides great additional value to their shoppers. I recommend you check them out.  Hint:  The Wehkamp site is in Dutch, so install Google translator in your browser and look for ‘Live together shopping’ on the product detail page.
• Relevance – The glut of products, information and marketing available to consumers through the Web is overwhelming.  Thus providing consumers what they want and when they want it through the e-commerce channel can be a challenge.   Personalization has been a buzz word for a while now to address that challenge, but effective personalization relies on consumer data, and the more data the better the personalization.  As mentioned above, Facebook certainly seems to be pushing for more open data, but even though the average Facebook user has 130 friends and shares 70 pieces of content each month with all of those friends, the extra step to make that content completely public was a big one to take for most and was met with a lot of controversy.  Consumers want personalized experiences, but without the element of Orwellism.  Allowing consumers to choose merchandising and marketing preferences, or providing advanced navigation and search functionality, are just a few effective ways to provide relevance to the on-line shopping experience, while putting the control into the consumer’s own hands.

While the data captured and used in the coupon example may in fact be part of a strategy to provide relevant discounts and even relevant experiences, without transparency of intent and consumer’s ability to choose to accept or not accept the value that personalized content brings, the experience was not socially acceptable.  In an industry where communication is not face-to-face, merchant’s have to constantly remind themselves to keep each and all of these goals in sight.  I’d love to hear other comments or ideas for addressing these issues.