The Internet as an Instrument for Collecting Customer-related Data: A Data Quality Perspective

The Internet has increasingly replaced or supplemented other communication and transaction channels. Due to the simplicity of getting information and conducting transactions, a steadily increasing number of consumers are using the World Wide Web for informing themselves and shopping online. From a company’s point of view, these changes in consumers’ behavior have generated a multitude of opportunities to collect data, either with the Internet users being aware of it (e.g. when conducting transactions or filling out a survey) or by analyzing their traces on the Web (e.g. cookies or log files). Along with the increased opportunities of easily generating vast amount of consumer data arise those problems which pertain to the control of data quality. The information which users provide voluntarily is especially difficult to validate against a number of important data quality attributes, such as believability, accuracy and reputation. By conducting two empirical studies (a Web site analysis and a survey) this paper shows how Austrian companies, most of which are small and medium-sized enterprises (SME’s), use the Internet for collecting data. Furthermore, the results demonstrate how issues of data quality are dealt with and highlight the importance of a comprehensive data management.