Market research is a key pre requisite to any marketing decision a firm makes.  In the past marketing research was mostly conducted through focus groups, looking at census’s, interviews with individuals and surveys.

Later, with the progression of technology it moved onto scanner data and loyalty programs which enabled firms to recognize what their consumers were purchasing.

More recently, over the past few years technology has dramatically increased and now a lot of market research can conducted without any knowledge of the consumer.  A good example of this is Google as it is able to make a profile of you based on what you have researched on the search engine.   One of the issues I have with this is that there is no trade off of value between consumers and marketers.  For example, when looking at scanner data or loyalty programs at a grocery store, the consumer is trading his or her information for cheaper prices.  With google the consumer is not receiving any benefit but Google is able to create an in depth profile of its user.

Moreover with technological change we now have consumer information stored electronically and its security can be questionable.  An example of this is Playstation as in 2011 over 77 million consumers personal data was “breached” by an external source.  Luckily credit card information was encrypted however all other information about Playstation users would be accessible by these hackers.

Technology has made it easier for marketing research.  Still there are a few ethical questions that do arise with how consumer information is obtained and the security of that information .  I feel that consumers in general need to be more informed about todays marketing research techniques in order to understand what information they are giving to these firms and how some of their personal information is stored.