Customer Privacy Orientation

As new personal data processing capabilities are made available to more firms, demonstrating privacy friendly marketing strategies becomes an essential part of a firm’s value proposition. Yet, so far, no research has systematically conceptualized and operationalized the different organizational facets that span a firm’s customer privacy orientation (CPO). We address the resulting conceptual ambiguity by (re-)conceptualizing CPO, defining it as the extent to which an organization engages in strategic, structural, and operative privacy orientation while developing, delivering, and maintaining products and/or services that ensure favorable privacy perceptions by customers, which is determined by four component dimensions (strategic CPO, structural CPO, operative CPO, and customer perceptions of CPO). This conceptualization emerges from a two-stage multimethod conceptualizing process leveraging the existing literature and qualitative data from 39 in-depth expert interviews. We then use several studies with a total of 813 managerial participants to develop and validate a parsimonious four-factor, 12-item CPO scale that shows internal consistency, reliability, and validity. Our findings provide scholars a unifying understanding and measurement instrument of CPO and equip managers with a selfassessment tool to analyze and develop their privacy orientation.