Big Data Breaches and Customer Compensation
Abstract
Big data breaches have become a significant threat to organizations. Affected customers expect compensation in response to big data breaches and not meeting these expectations can cause customers to feel that they have been unfairly treated. The presentation will report on a research program, studying Sony, Target and Adobe, examining customer compensation following data breaches. The unique elements of the research program include pre- and post-compensation data collection and the use of multiple methods to gather data. We develop a model that helps breached organizations manage customers’ justice perceptions and outcomes. Result from one of the studies is as follows: Polynomial regression and response surface analyses with responses from affected customers suggest that customers’ justice perceptions are influenced by the actual compensation provided as well as the type and extent of compensation an organization could have and should have provided, i.e., customers’ compensation expectations. Interestingly, positive and negative expectation disconfirmation led to less favorable justice perceptions of customers compared to when expectations were confirmed. Justice perceptions were, in turn, associated with continued shopping intentions, positive word-of-mouth, and online complaining.
About the speaker
Prof. Viswanath Venkatesh received his bachelor degree in computer science and engineering at the PSG College of Bharathiar University in 1991, and his PhD at the University of Minnesota in 1997. He is a Distinguished Professor and the first holder of the George and Boyce Billingsley Chair in Information Systems, as well as the PhD Program Director in the Information Systems Department at the Walton College of Business in the University of Arkansas, where he has served since June 2004. Prior to joining Arkansas, he was on the faculty at the University of Maryland.
Prof. Venkatesh is widely regarded as one of the most influential scholars in business and economics. His research focuses on understanding the diffusion of technologies in organizations and society. His work has appeared in leading journals in information systems, organizational behavior, psychology, marketing and operations management journals including Management Science, MIS Quarterly, and Information Systems Research to name a few.
In 2014, he was recognized by Thompson Reuters as one of the 95 high-impact scholars in business and economics. In 2012, he was ranked the 27th most influential scholar in management. For over a decade, he has worked with companies and government agencies, and has rigorously studied real world phenomena. Recently, he served on an expert panel at the United Nations on the advancement of women.
