Cultivating Trust Within the Digital Economy

This ecommerce & virtual stores guide is a report on the trust economy that explains the technology and transparency measures needed to strengthen bonds between people and corporations

Executive Summary

Only a relatively small portion of the public say they understand what is being done with the information collected about them and their identities, and even fewer feel confident in their ability to competently protect their digital privacy; while at the same time, more and more consumers are leaving traces of their activities, preferences, and personal information online. As individuals continue to trade personally identifiable information such as location metadata, online history, and biometric information for convenience and simplicity across the growing online ecosystem, there is an opportunity for companies and brands to provide users with safeguards, transparency, education, and protocols that address these privacy concerns, while also offering proactive solutions for digital security.

Report Overview

The rapid growth of the digital economy has accelerated the free flow of sensitive data across the internet and a growing number of connected devices, often outpacing measures in place to protect that information and educate users around the use of their data by advertisers, governments, brands, and institutions. It is an exciting and pivotal time within the digital economy. Within this report, the PSFK research team looks at nine trends-led strategies in data privacy and security, and brings them to life with a number of best-practice examples and innovations from the marketplace.

What You’ll Learn In This Report

• Why digital literacy and online safety education are becoming more prevalent, with data privacy and security now a baseline expectation for consumers,
• As individuals become more knowledgeable about their place in the online world, why the balance of power between companies and consumers within the data economy is beginning to shift.
• How changes to privacy laws have led to an emerging personal data market where consumers pay for privacy, and companies, institutions, and other organizations in turn pay or reward users for access to their personal data are starting to emerge.
• How personal APIs and encrypted access protocols are inverting the traditional relationship between user, user data, and provider by putting privacy control back in the consumers’ hands, giving them the ability to pick and choose both the degree and type of access third parties and organizations are granted to their personal information.
• Why web3 technologies like blockchain, machine learning, and artificial intelligence are also proving to be useful tools in identifying fraudulent actors and protecting user privacy, while also still allowing organizations to measure and activate non-personal insights from networks of decentralized datasets.
• How companies and brands use consumer data, and the education they produce around those efforts, will be crucial to maintaining trust.
• The impact of trust on ecommerce & virtual stores

What’s In This Report?

To help our community of retail insiders better understand how to build trust with consumer in the digital economy, PSFK has identified 9 key strategies that highlight innovative ways in which technology and transparency are being utilized to strengthen bonds.

This report on trust in the digital economy includes:

• 9 new strategies for building trust and transparency
• 36 best-in-class examples from organizations leading the way through innovation
• Consumer insights around deepening customer relationships through data privacy and educational content

Who Prepared This Report?

This report on trust in the digital economy was developed by the same PSFK research department that since 2004 has provided trends-led innovation consulting advice to Apple, BMW, Facebook/Meta, Google, Microsoft, Samsung and Volkswagen.