Mobile marketing has many advantages that can help businesses to reach consumers through the mobile phones. One of the advantages is location-based notifications that uses the consumer’s location and can provide for them personalized advertisements or notifications based on where they are. This can be convenient and also beneficial for the business to reach the consumer and also to the consumer. There are ethical and legal considerations that need to be considered, such as, the collection of personal information and how it will be used. It is also important that the consumer is able to trust that these businesses will be honest with how all of the consumer information will be used.

An example of a company that faced some legal consequences for how it used its location-tracking strategies was Google, who had an $85 million settlement with the state of Arizona in 2022. According to the Arizona Attorney General’s Office (2022), Google was accused of continuing to collect their consumer’s location and information about them even when the consumer would opt to turn off location tracking in their settings. Google was allegedly still using others settings and services to collect information about the consumers and then this information could be used for other purposes, such as, personalized advertising.

Google was accused of violating the Arizona Consumer Fraud Act because they were allegedly deceptive with their location-tracking practices. This can cause the consumer to lose trust in the company because what is the point of even having that option if the company is still able to collect the information that they want even if the consumer doesn’t want to? Consumers should be able to have the option to decide what they want or don’t want and be able to trust that the company is going to abide by that and not have the option to do whatever they want.

Another thing to consider is how constant location tracking from a company could be an invasion of privacy. I don’t think that it is necessary for a company to know where the consumer is at all times, especially if the consumer already has turned off their location. I feel that it is important that a consumer has the right to have control of how much of their information is being shared and without feeling that every move of theirs is being monitored.

This lawsuit against Google reached a settlement of $85 million to settle the allegations that were brought against Google and the state of Arizona (Arizona Attorney General’s Office, 2022). Even though $85 million is a significant amount of money, it depends on the company how much of an impact that could make. Although a company’s reputation could be damaged and cause the consumers to wonder if they are able to trust that company, especially with their personal information.

I think it’s important that a business is honest when they use mobile marketing and they are completely transparent with how they will collect and use the consumers information. Businesses need to let the consumer have the option to choose how much information they want to share with the business and the option to turn off location sharing, and most importantly that the business respects that decision. Another important mobile marketing tactic to consider is making sure not to spam the consumer with too much notifications and advertisements. The consumer could find that annoying and they might even unsubscribe and lose trust with the business.

References

Arizona Attorney General’s Office. (2022, October 4). Attorney General Mark Brnovich achieves historic $85 million settlement with Google. https://www.azag.gov/press-release/attorney-general-mark-brnovich-achieves-historic-85-million-settlement-google

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