Identifying factors influencing the willingness to share private data

The goal of the master thesis is to identify factors influencing customers willingness to share private data. The reason behind this is the growing trend of digitalization and the vast number of information customers are sharing and retailers collecting. Relevant papers are screened while nonrelevant removed. Consequently, the remaining papers are evaluated by applying a qualitative content analysis resulting in important information to be structured and utilized which are utilized to create a catalogue of factors as the result of the master thesis. Similar factors are grouped into categories offering a comprehensive overview of the most influence aspects. Each factor is explained in detailed and provide insight as to how the customer behaves depending on the factor. As a result, a catalogue of 28 identified factors structured into 9 categories is created providing information and explanation on how each factor influences customers willingness. The result shows that some factors are more significant than others while unsignificant factors gain importance depending on other contexts and the relation between each factor. For instance, demographic factors like age and gender play an important role in customers willingness to share private data while privacy concerns drastically decrease it. However, this can be counterbalanced by rewards or a better company-customer relationship.