Reinventing direct marketing — with VRM inside

Abstract

Direct marketing is now faced with endemic crisis. Toxic ingredients of this crisis include rising consumer concerns about privacy and data protection, growing hostility and resistance to unwanted messaging, rising costs, falling returns, increasing concerns about environmental impact, and intensifying regulatory scrutiny and restrictions. Three core characteristics of direct marketing are responsible for these problems; (1) Data management: all responsibility for data management (collection, storage, analysis, usage, etc) lies with the seller; (2) Information fl ows are almost wholly ' top down ' from sellers to buyers in the form of selling messages; (3) Metrics: success is defi ned in sellercentric terms-costs versus benefi ts to the seller. By empowering individuals to collect, store and share rich, up-to-date personal data with suppliers, vendor relationship management (VRM) offers a way through direct marketing ' s current impasse. To realise the new win-wins made possible by VRM, the industry needs to start adjusting now.

Digitaler Haushalt und Markt

“…In Bezug auf Paperwork mit organisationsgerichteter Interaktion werden solche Angebote dem Konzept des Vendor Relationship Managements (VRM) zugeordnet (Searls 2012). Dieses Konzept wird als eine Sammlung von Werkzeugen (Tools) verstanden, die Verbraucher:innen bei der Erledigung ihrer Papierarbeiten in einer digitalisierten und elektronisch vernetzten Weise unterstützen (Mitchell et al 2008). VRM-Tools werden allgemein als Mittel des Empowerments sowie der Arbeitsentlastung von Verbraucher:innen im Handeln auf dem Markt verstanden (Alvarez 2017;Dethier et al 2022).…”

“…VRM-Tools werden allgemein als Mittel des Empowerments sowie der Arbeitsentlastung von Verbraucher:innen im Handeln auf dem Markt verstanden (Alvarez 2017;Dethier et al 2022). Mitchell et al (2008) kritisieren aktuelle Marketingmaßnahmen von Unternehmen gegenüber Verbraucher:innen als ein Raten von Bedarfen und ein Arbeiten auf Basis von Vermutungen. VRM-Software oder -Plattformen könnten in den Händen der Verbraucher:innen als Medium zu einer bedarfsgerechten Interaktion mit ihren Anbieter:innen (und umgekehrt) dienen.…”

A vision for global privacy bridges: Technical and legal measures for international data markets

“…In an entrepreneurial effort in Silicon Valley, Kaliya Hamlin, who calls herself "Identity Woman", has established the Personal Data Ecosystem (Pdec, 2014), which supports small companies with venture capital access and knowledge to pursue a user-centric data-handling strategy. In an extremely visionary way, Doc Searls proposed the establishment of an "Intention Economy" (Mitchell et al, 2008) where customers use personal agents or third parties to pull services from companies rather than companies proactively approaching customers and offering their services. Trusted third parties and personal data vault technologies are key for such ideas to thrive.…”

A Critical Look at Decentralized Personal Data Architectures

“…And yet, by the end of the decade, many new initiatives and projects that shared almost identical goals emerged. Vendor Relationship Management (VRM) [35] has gained steady momentum as a general set of principles that aim simultaneously to improve user privacy, enhance customer autonomy, and increase market efficiency through a combination of mechanisms that aggregate data in a single (per-user) repository under users' control and tools to negotiate agreements that would grant outside organizations access to and use of that data.…”

“…Kang et al introduce the intriguing idea of licensing intermediaries to increase their trustworthiness [28]. In the other direction, Vendor Relationship Management systems largely eliminate the infomediary as a separate entity, and instead replace it with a software agent [35]. Some software intermediaries like Adnostic use cryptography to achieve additional privacy properties [54].…”