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The management of consumer privacy has become a critical concern for organizations in the age of artificial intelligence–powered marketing. The impact of data on the market environment has brought both benefits and challenges, with marketers gaining valuable insights but also raising privacy concerns. As artificial intelligence–powered marketing advances, consumer vulnerability increases due to the sensitivity of collected data. This vulnerability leads some consumers to resort to falsifying information, posing a significant threat to the digital economy. Privacy empowerment and customer control play a vital role in addressing these challenges. This chapter explores the influencing factors and ethical considerations surrounding data falsification. It also discusses strategies to mitigate perceived vulnerability through privacy controls and explores the consequences of data breaches and customer vulnerability. The chapter further emphasizes the need for organizations to balance benefits, risks, and customer trust while harnessing the value of customer data. An ethical framework for data privacy marketing audits is proposed to help organizations assess their data practices responsibly and competitively. By integrating personal data protection strategies within an ethical framework, organizations can protect consumer privacy, enhance customer trust, and maintain their competitive edge in the market.

Purpose: This research investigates the effects of the coronavirus pandemic on Portuguese and Brazilian consumers’ vulnerability in contrasting age groups. It seeks to establish the relationship between fear of COVID-19 and the pandemic’s impact on customer’s vulnerability to help companies design strategies to cope with this new market context and be prepared to address these vulnerabilities in a future international health crisis.

Design/Methodology/Approach: This study employs a quantitative research method to assess the different impacts of the COVID-19 pandemic on consumer vulnerability. Based on Portuguese and Brazilian residents’ surveys, an age/country-segmented cross-cultural multi-group analysis was performed to understand the differences in vulnerability.

Findings: Outcomes proved how the pandemic aggravates distinctively the vulnerability dimensions of consumers living in Portugal and Brazil. Besides, results highlight significant differences in consumers’ vulnerability during the pandemic given their age group. A positive correlation between age and fear of COVID-19 was also verified.

Value: Results were obtained based on consumers’ perceptions and scores rather than postulated behaviors. The findings highlight the need for health prevention measures to avoid neglecting existing vulnerable groups, whilst verifying how COVID-19 has managed to proliferate consumers’ vulnerability. Suggestions are drawn for both firms and governments based on obtained results and existing literature. Exemplar business strategies to avoid these vulnerabilities are put forward and discussed. The potential business advantages of firms shaping their activity according to their customers’ current vulnerabilities, during international pandemics, are also pointed.

This paper examines how inter-organizational and interpersonal trust are created and how these trust levels can be balanced to create positive outcomes in high-involvement customer–supplier relationships. Using a theoretical analysis and conceptual development, we propose a framework highlighting different drivers and moderators of the two trust levels. The integrative framework emphasizes the antecedents of interpersonal and inter-organizational trust (competence, honesty, and benevolence vs transparency and foreseeing conflicts) and the role of relational signaling as a moderator to catalyze the “leap of faith,” as well as the articulation of trust-level bases and outcomes. The paper contributes to the discussion on trust levels’ drivers and the need to use relational signaling in order to create and maintain effective trust at the interpersonal and inter-organizational levels. Unlike most of the existing literature, we argue that interpersonal trust does not necessarily develop into the fold of inter-organizational trust. Studying the antecedents and consequences of trust in the context of high-involvement relationships adds new insights to the understanding of customer–supplier relationships.

Building trust and living interpersonal trust are crucial corporate executive virtues that are needed today. Once you have developed and solidified a high level of genuine interpersonal trust with all your stakeholders, especially customers, suppliers, and employees, then you are on the right path of managing and transforming your company. A high level of interpersonal trust between all stakeholders and corporates in a business situation will break down communication barriers, foster serious conversation and sharing of ideas, and will eliminate corporate transactional anxieties of fear, mistrust, guilt, rigidity, blame, and resentment. When stakeholders trust you and you trust them, then you speak freely, they speak freely, and your mutual sustained transparency is a gateway to survival, revival, and sustained corporate recovery and transformation, and steady growth and prosperity. Conversely, when there is low trust, high mistrust, and high distrust among stakeholders in a business situation, communications and conversations are stressed and fragmented, teamwork and team spirit are very low, and the company is heading toward its ruin and extermination. Such is the crucial role of interpersonal trust in business. This chapter explores the crucial phenomenon of corporate interpersonal trust. We review various cases, models, concepts, definitions, and theories of trust from the management literature in general, and from the marketing field in particular, to derive psychological, behavioral, ethical, and moral principles of corporate trust, trusting relations, and trusting strategies.

Purpose – This study draws on conflict management literature to examine service recovery by service organizations and its effect on the important marketing outcomes of customer perceptions of service quality (satisfaction, trust, attribution/praise, and value) which influences customer retention rate (loyalty) and thus firm profitability.Design/methodology – Data from 412 banking customers are first employed to test the study’s model, and the results are subsequently cross-validated using a sample of 421 health-care customers.Findings – In services marked by moderate to low customer contact (i.e., task oriented) such as banking, effective conflict management tends to increase customer satisfaction, trust, and perceived customer value. It also has a positive effect on customer loyalty, albeit mediated by the above three variables. However, in high contact service contexts (i.e., personal oriented) like health care, conflict management seems to have relatively weak direct and indirect effects on customer loyalty.Research limitations/implications – The single country (Malaysian) origin of the present study’s data suggests the need for corresponding research in a Western context, where customers likely have different service expectations. Additionally, the research scope could be extended to focus on the relational nature of conflict management (the way in which a conflict is framed and resolved) in service recovery and how this moderates the relationship between perceived service quality and customer loyalty. The bi-industry approach taken in this research could also be extended to other low- and high-contact service sectors.Practical implications – Service organizations may benefit from training their employees on conflict management, honing skills in sensing and halting potential customer conflicts, and instituting a rapid and procedurally robust conflict resolution mechanism.Value/originality – This research is the first to examine firm’s conflict management across two service sectors. It contributes to theory by situating conflict management at the crux of the service failure/recovery relationship quality debate and underlining its relevance for a range of desired outcomes namely, customer satisfaction, customer trust, customer value attribution or customer praise, and customer loyalty.