INVESTIGATING PRIVACY ACROSS CULTURES IMPLICATIONS FOR MARKETING AND CONSUMER RESEARCH DANIEL R HO专业论文.doc

专业文档，值得收藏！ 专业文档，值得珍藏！ Investigating Privacy Across Cultures: Implications for Marketing and Consumer Research Daniel R. Horne, Providence College H. Rika Houston, California State University-Los Angeles David A. Horne, California State University-Long Beach Abstract Privacy is gaining more attention from academic researchers and public policy makers as advances in technology ease the collection, storage and analysis of personal information. Policy attempts to “protect” privacy often fail to consider that the notion of privacy is a complex cultural phenomenon. This research explores cross cultural differences in the concept of privacy. Introduction While the concept of “privacy” has generated worldwide discussion, few terms are as imprecisely defined and understood. Scholars in the area have come to the conclusion that privacy means different things to different people, but that complicates the work of researches who are seeking unifying characteristics. Different academic disciplines have presented views of the concept that reflect a set of domain specific characteristics which obscure attempts to develop a single clearly defined concept. Indeed, a number of edited volumes address these individual disciplines such as sociology (c.f., Weintraub and Kumar 1997), philosophy (c.f., Schoeman 1984) and law (c.f., Paul, Miller and Paul 2000). Unfortunately, these approaches tend not only to reflect inherent disciplinary biases, but are almost exclusively developed in the context of American or Western European culture (for exceptions c.f., Altman 1977; Rustemli and Kokdemir 2001). In fact, many scholars have contemplated the distinction between public and private as one of the grand dichotomies of Western thought (Benn and Gaus 1983; Habermas 1974; 1989; Laslett 1973; Weintraub 1997). While some of these views present divergent perspectives, Weintraub (1997) analytically narrows the different forms of the public/private distinction down to two distinct kinds of imag