Marcus Schögel

Marketers are in a unique position to improve customers’ data privacy but often lack the necessary know-how. Hence, this study examines the link between marketers’ privacy literacy and their firms’ privacy orientation.

The discrepancy between informational privacy attitudes and actual behaviour of consumers is called the “privacy paradox”. Researchers across disciplines have formulated different theories on why consumers’ privacy concerns do not translate into increased protective behaviour. Over the past two decades multiple differing explanations for the paradox have been pub-lished. However, authors generally agree that companies are in a strong position to reduce consumers’ paradoxical behaviour by improving their customers’ informational privacy. Hence, this paper aims at answering the question: How can companies address the privacy paradox to improve their customers’ information privacy? Reviewing a sample of improve-ment recommendations from 138 papers that explore 41 theories in total, we determined that companies can generally align their privacy practices more closely with customers’ expectations across 4 interconnected managerial processes: (1) strategic initiatives, (2) structural improvements, (3) human resource management, and (4) service development. The findings of this systematic literature review detail how companies can address both the rational and irra-tional nature of the privacy decision-making process. Furthermore, we propose a dynamic model able to identify weaknesses and strengths in companies’ privacy orientation.