How can brands encourage consumers to donate data to a data-driven social partnership? An examination of hedonic vs. functional categories

Consumers’ willingness to donate personal data clearly benefits the marketers with whom they share it. Data-driven social partnerships allow marketers to leverage the data, serve the public good, personalize products for consumers, and boost profit. This paper focuses on better understanding what drives consumer data-donation to data-driven social partnerships, and ways that marketers can encourage consumers’ data-donation. Using a multi-method approach that includes a qualitative component – three focus groups – and two quantitative studies, we show that corporate reputation is linked to consumers’ desire to donate data via brand trust in the partnership for both functional and hedonic categories, however, hedonic categories can benefit even more from consumers’ perceptions of brand coolness that lead to brand trust in the partnership, displaying double mediation linking corporate reputation to consumers’ desire to donate data. Theoretical and managerial implications for these findings are discussed.