"What Is Creepy? Towards Understanding That Eerie Feeling When It Seems the Internet ""Knows"" You"

Abstract

With the proliferation of Big Data available, marketers, data brokers, data aggregators and online advertisers, are able to collect personal information and track behavior about consumers and deliver personalized communication that they believe is the right message, to the right person at the right time. Not all consumers view the practice of behavioral or retargeting marketing as clever or coincidental, but creepy. This qualitative methods research moves beyond the theoretical to the experiential and focus on how people experience personalized communication or ads when they perceive it to be creepy. What is creepy? Creepy is word that has been socially constructed to ascribe meaning to the reality that new knowledge has been created when personal information has been collected and used in manner that is unknown and unexpected. In order to make sense of creepy, the amorphous “they” which is believe to be in control is anthropomorphized and social imaginaries as well as other symbols are used to make sense of this experience. At first glance, creepy masks as only a privacy issue; albeit, privacy is a component, however, it goes further than that. Amongst other things, our research found that creepy is a continuum and manifests to some degree when the dynamic forces of trust, transparency and control within a certain context are juxtaposed which is displayed in what we have called the Creepy Quadrant. Key words: Creepy marketing; social imaginaries; behavioral marketing; data privacy; data privacy.