Semester Award Granted

Summer 2025

Submission Date

July 2025

Document Type

Dissertation

Degree Name

Doctor of Philosophy (PhD)

Thesis/Dissertation Advisor [Chair]

Anil Bilgihan

Abstract

Firms today spend more than 30 billion dollars on marketing data. This obsession with data has been propelled by a firm's ongoing need to better understand its consumers and, in turn, drive positive firm performance. While the relationship between brand equity and firm performance has been confirmed for the last two decades, this study explores how data collection negatively moderates the existing relationship by testing multiple variables of privacy risk. This theoretical paper with a pilot study explores how the conflicting balance of shareholder theory and stakeholder theory can lead firms towards data collection practices that indirectly diminish the firm’s financial benefits due to consumer privacy risk. The pilot study of 13 firms (N=13) with 540 consumer observations (n=540) utilizes OLS regression with interaction to explore the moderating effects of four privacy risk dimensions. The study provides preliminary evidence for a history of data collection having a weakening effect on the relationship between brand equity and firm performance. Exploring this moderating effect confirms stakeholder theory as the preferred theoretical construct for firm governance when establishing data collection practices.

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