More than half of U.S. consumers surveyed in June 2019 by RIS News said they’d let a retailer digitally identify them in-store—through location-based technology—in exchange for special promotions and offers.

“Consumers appear more knowledgeable and skeptical about sharing location data, but they haven’t changed their behavior yet,” said Yory Wurmser, eMarketer principal analyst and author of the company’s “Location Intelligence 2019” report.

“Many consumers are willing to share their location data with marketers in exchange for some type of value,” he said. “Others may want to reduce data sharing but don’t know how. Regardless, it’s likely that consumers will demand more control over their data in the future.”

As eMarketer.com’s Rimma Kats points out, a poll of U.S. internet users by Ipsos and World Economic Forum from November 2018 indicated that the largest share of respondents said they’d be comfortable sharing their personal data if brands were clear about what they planned to do with it. But nearly as many said they’d be happy to trade that information for compensation, such as a discount or reward.

Additionally, nearly two-thirds of internet users in the U.S. and Western Europe said they would be interested in sharing their location data in exchange for discounts, according to an April 2018 study from Forrester Consulting and Loqate. And for many consumers, a discount of just 10percent makes for a worthwhile incentive.

Kats notes that roughly seven in 10 internet users surveyed by Blis last year said that if Amazon offered them a discount, they would share their buying habits from a competitor, such as Target.

Nearly 60 percent said that a 10 percent to 30 percent discount would sway them, while another 41 percent would be influenced only by discounts of 40 percent or more.

Source: June 2019 survey by RIS News