Thank you very much for applying to one of the positions related to the project entitled "Consumer relationships with digital platforms: Consumer costs and opportunities for empowerment in a data-driven world" financed by the Swiss National Science Foundation.
Here is the summary of the project:
The widespread use of digital platforms such as Amazon and Google has made their services—including search, email, maps, cloud storage, and voice assistants—an integral part of our daily lives globally. For instance, Google is one of the major digital platforms hosting nine digital services with over a billion users [1]. These services have become a fundamental part of how we access and use information, and as a result, individuals have become more interconnected with platforms like Google and Amazon [2]. Importantly, thanks to collecting unprecedented amounts of data from their users through multiple services, these platforms can personalize services, but likewise create a web of dependency. This project explores the development of relationships between consumers and digital platforms through their many services over time within a framework of consumer benefits and costs.
While digital platforms offer many benefits, their collection and commodification of personal data raise questions about data protection and the potential for abuse—hallmarks of the digital surveillance era. [3] [4] [5]. Many individuals report concerns about the privacy of their data, but they see no option other than to accept their situation [6]. Nearly 50% of Alexa users feel exploited by Amazon, yet only 15% have actively reviewed their stored voice recordings [7]. In addition, even with the awareness of such issues, it can be a significant challenge to quit or switch platforms, because of how deeply they are integrated into people’s lives [8] [9] [10]. By examining factors that influence consumer-platform relationships, this research aims to understand the costs for the users that may increase over time (switching and privacy costs), potentially leading to vulnerability and negative outcomes such as reduced digital well-being and feelings of resignation. Drawing on Transaction Cost Theory [11] [12], we investigate the growth of such costs in users’ relationships with digital platforms using objective usage data, matched with user surveys. Building on that, we seek to identify actionable empowerment strategies for consumers to create more equitable relationships with digital platforms.
This research proposal has two work packages (WP), each utilizing real usage data provided by Google to individual users to explore consumer-platform relationship development. WP1 will examine relationship development through multiple services using objective longitudinal data covering the entirety of the users’ relationship history with Google and longitudinal survey data covering the last 6 months of the relationship. Building on this, WP2 will employ two field experimental studies to test strategies to empower users in their relationships with digital platforms and mitigate the unwanted effects consumers might experience. The usage data of individual users on how they employ platform services provides a detailed record of each consumer’s daily behaviors, which represents an exceptional data opportunity to explore our research questions. This analytical strategy entails several methodological advantages for this project: 1) objective, behavioral data, 2) a large data sample, and 3) a longitudinal perspective, allowing us to track the growth of our variables of interest over time. Understanding the evolving nature of these relationships, which assume a pervasive role in our daily lives, can help design effective strategies to cultivate healthy digital relationships and ensure that consumers are not exploited by digital technologies. Ours will be the first study to investigate the development of a relationship with a multi-service platform from the perspective of user cost growth, using objective usage data. This will provide consumers, firms and governments information that can help create frameworks for the equitable governance of these relationships.