Do you care or do I have a choice? Expert authority and consumer autonomy in medicine consumption

Author(s):  
Anna Schneider-Kamp ◽  
Søren Askegaard
Keyword(s):  
2021 ◽  
Vol 13 (4) ◽  
pp. 2332
Author(s):  
Lena Bjørlo ◽  
Øystein Moen ◽  
Mark Pasquine

Artificial intelligence (AI)-based decision aids are increasingly employed by businesses to assist consumers’ decision-making. Personalized content based on consumers’ data brings benefits for both consumers and businesses, i.e., with regards to more relevant content. However, this practice simultaneously enables increased possibilities for exerting hidden interference and manipulation on consumers, reducing consumer autonomy. We argue that due to this, consumer autonomy represents a resource at the risk of depletion and requiring protection, due to its fundamental significance for a democratic society. By balancing advantages and disadvantages of increased influence by AI, this paper addresses an important research gap and explores the essential challenges related to the use of AI for consumers’ decision-making and autonomy, grounded in extant literature. We offer a constructive, rather than optimistic or pessimistic, outlook on AI. Hereunder, we present propositions suggesting how these problems may be alleviated, and how consumer autonomy may be protected. These propositions constitute the fundament for a framework regarding the development of sustainable AI, in the context of online decision-making. We argue that notions of transparency, complementarity, and privacy regulation are vital for increasing consumer autonomy and promoting sustainable AI. Lastly, the paper offers a definition of sustainable AI within the contextual boundaries of online decision-making. Altogether, we position this paper as a contribution to the discussion of development towards a more socially sustainable and ethical use of AI.


2010 ◽  
pp. 172-187 ◽  
Author(s):  
Matt Hettche

While the Internet is generally regarded as a tool of consumer empowerment, recent innovations in e-marketing signal a disparity in the quality of knowledge that the e-buyer and e-seller each bring to the exchange process. Armed with sophisticated consumer tracking programs and advanced data mining techniques, the e-seller’s competitive advantage for anticipating consumer preference is quickly outpacing the e-buyer’s ability to negotiate fair terms for an equal trade. This chapter considers the possible threat that aggressive forms of electronic surveillance pose for a market economy in e-commerce and offers a framework for how marketing practitioners can protect consumer autonomy online. Using John Locke’s classic social contract theory as a model, I argue that information created by an end-user’s online activity is a form of ‘virtual property’ that in turn establishes a consumer’s right to privacy online.


2019 ◽  
Vol 35 (1) ◽  
pp. 43-61
Author(s):  
Renaud Lunardo ◽  
Camille Saintives

This research challenges the notion that autonomy is beneficial for consumers in every situation. Specifically, this research demonstrates across two experiments and one field study that autonomy can lead to pleasure only when risk is low. Importantly, these studies also identify personal control as a mechanism that explains why autonomy makes the consumption experience more or less pleasurable, depending on risk perceptions. In Study 1, we demonstrate that perceived risk moderates the effect that autonomy may have on making the experience pleasurable, with a lack of risk making autonomy increase personal control. Study 2 replicates this moderating effect of risk in a field study. To test if the effects replicate using another type of perceived risk, Study 3 manipulates social risk and replicates its moderating effect on the relationship between autonomy and personal control on the pleasure observed in Studies 1 and 2. Collectively, this research draws attention to the need to consider risk when making consumers autonomous, and it offers novel contributions to the work on consumer autonomy.


2007 ◽  
Vol 21 (4) ◽  
pp. 353-369 ◽  
Author(s):  
Helena Siipi ◽  
Susanne Uusitalo
Keyword(s):  

Author(s):  
Seana Valentine Shiffrin

This chapter considers how the U.S. law of deceptive advertising embeds within it an extended form of responsibility, making advertisers sometimes responsible for consumers’ mistakes. The chapter justifies this pattern of liability as a division of moral labor that bolsters consumers’ ability to trust the quality of the food supply and the representations made about it. It answers worries about paternalism, arguing that the law is not predicated on distrust of consumers, but facilitates consumer autonomy, permitting consumers to direct their scarce time and energy to projects of their own choosing. The chapter also answers freedom of speech concerns about restricting advertisers’ ability to make factually true representations. It emphasizes that commercial speakers have a special responsibility to ensure accurate uptake by consumers because property law affords commercial producers the ability to exclude consumers and their representatives from verifying speech about speakers’ products for themselves.


Author(s):  
Aaron Perzanowski ◽  
Jason Schultz

This chapter observes two trends: the rise of the digital marketplace as the result of technological development and the decline of ownership due to aggressive intellectual property laws, restrictive contractual provisions and technological locks. Admittedly, the market offers consumers a choice between ownership and more conditional, impermanent access to goods, but because of the asymmetric information possessed by consumers and retailers or IP rights holders, consumers frequently cannot make informed decisions. This leads to the loss of control over the goods they purchase; more importantly, the lack of ownership rights has serious implications for cultural preservation, innovation and consumer autonomy. The rest of the book unfolds by detailing how consumers and IP rights holders contend for control over physical and digital goods in various areas.


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