What information have companies collected about you? Your attention data, behaviors, demographics, clickstream patterns, etc… and more.

Which companies have personal data about you?
Where is it stored? Who has control of it?
Or rather.. who have they sold it to? And what will they do with it?

MANY companies now maintain a large array of personal info about anyone who uses their website or other services. Most companies use personal data to target products, advertisements and other offers to consumers.

Pierre-Guillaume Wielezynski of the World Bank, posted about a future model of user-centric ad-serving where corporations partner with individuals to access their personal information.

eConsultancy mostly caters to the UK market, but they actively release white papers on topics such as search marketing, online community building, affiliate marketing, ecommerce, mobile, analytics, and a slew of other best practices which are highly relevant to the internet industry of the US and other countries also.

Their recent release of internet statistics covers the following subjects:

1. Usage and Demographics
2. E-commerce
3. Online Marketing
4. Multi-Channel Marketing / Commerce
5. Site Performance and User Technology
6. Mobile – UK Market
7. Interactive TV – UK Market

It’s available for download on their site (non-members can still download a section of the report for free) They also offer a huge collection of free reports on the internet industry regardless of site membership status.

In all fairness this research was only performed in the Canadian market, but it seems logical that universal findings would prove similar.

Frequent online shoppers are people who are comfortable navigating the internet. Since social media and social networking tools are engaging, interactive elements of the web, people who use social media and other web 2.0 technologies probably spend more time online than those who simply visit static websites.

More time online… more online shopping?

The study also examines the direct effect that social networking has on online purchase decision-making: