Reciprocity and holiday returns
I read a lot of email newsletters. One of my favorites is called “Numlock News.” On November 5, their email shared a statistic that surprised me, although it made sense after I thought about it more. “Last year consumers in the United States returned $743 billion worth of merchandise, which was 14.5 percent of all the things they bought.” That feels like a lot of regret, purchases that didn’t work out as the buyer had hoped.
The flip side of regret, in this case, is freedom. We’re more free to make purchases when we know we can return them and get our money back if it doesn’t work out. It’s an even more striking sentiment at this time of year, as we approach the end of year holidays, a season of heavy gift giving. Think about it: how often do you include a gift receipt?
Without the ability to return purchases, we would have less freedom, less creativity, and less experimentation, because we would take fewer chances. This is true both for things we buy for ourselves and for gifts we give to others. Would we buy that bright yellow jacket that looks really great in the store’s lighting, or would we worry it would look like mustard outdoors? Would we decide to get something safe for Aunt Jane instead of that pretty sweater we saw, out of fear she might not like it or it might not fit her perfectly?
It’s a similar situation with data transfers. Data portability is valuable because it gives us the freedom to try new things. Want to try out another photo management tool, something that has new kinds of filters or printing tools? You can bring your pictures with you.
But – what happens when you use that new service for a month, and upload hundreds of new photos to it, then you change your mind and you want to go back? Do you have to re-upload everything? That seems like a lot of work. Enough so that you might hesitate before making the switch in the first place, before trying something with different features or pricing or customer service, just because of the risk.
One of DTI’s core principles is reciprocity. Reciprocity is about de-risking freedom. If you switch services and you upload more data, you should be able to bring it back with you. Your time and effort shouldn’t be wasted. You should be free to make changes to your digital toolkit, and you should be free to change your mind.
Data portability has complex normative underpinnings. When it’s viewed from primarily a competition lens, as a policy lever to make sure users aren’t discouraged from moving from larger services to smaller ones, some would argue in favor of an asymmetry. From that perspective, focused narrowly on competitors and market shares, there’s no advantage in a smaller service allowing data exports, no direct impact on market concentration.
But that’s why it’s important to look at policy from the user’s perspective. Even setting aside the data protection components of portability and keeping the focus on competition, it seems likely there will be users who hesitate to try out a new, competitive service. Part of this could be a public awareness challenge, if there are portability options that users aren’t aware of or don’t know how to use. But even the savviest users may fairly worry that anything they do in the new service they’ll have to redo if they change their minds.
Think back to the retail shopping metaphor. If you could return anything you bought from a major online marketplace, but the cute boutique store down the street had a strict no returns policy, how would that affect your spending habits?
Of course, all metaphors have their limitations, as does this one. But digital markets are at their healthiest when people both are, and feel, free to try new things. And to the (growing) extent that access to personal data is a key component of the value of online services, reciprocity is a key part of de-risking that critical freedom.