Ethics of data mining
July 18th, 2008 by Mike
The introduction of the book “Data Mining Explained”, makes a very interesting statement. It says that customers today want to be treated as individuals. Furthermore, business should no longer manipulate or manage customers. The 20th century was a time of scarcity of consumer choice and mass need. This allow companies to manipulate. The 21nd century offers many choices and little need.
In a sense customers now have power. I imagine that before industrialization business was more personal. We need to make it personal again, but on a massive scale unlike the personal business of preindustrial times.
The term for this process is Customer Relationship Management (CRM), which is about changing company philosophy and behavior (self manipulation), rather than changing customer behavior. Knowledge is mined from data and used to modify company behavior to serve customers.
A company could conceivably use data to manipulate customers. It is a choice. There is a value statement in the books description of data mining as part of a CRM process that modifies company behavior for a customers benefit. However, any company that follows this practice does so because increases profits. It is as if the new economic structure encourages ethical behavior.
Great, but will that behavior become a virtue so that when the economic structure changes again it is retained?