The role of e-consumer empowerment on personal data disclosure in the digital economy

Digital transformation has improved online shopping from the beginning of the 20th century. Online businesses have exponentially expanded the level of service delivery with the help of decision support systems using user digital footprint. E-consumer online behavioural data is progressively becoming a valuable asset for precise, granular online targeting. Consumers are being monitored to predict real-time demand based on browsing behavioural surplus. This paper assessed the influence of electronic consumer (e-consumer) empowerment on, perceived trust, purchase intention, and the effects of data harvesting.  A cross-sectional quantitative approach was used with an online survey of 400 respondents. Data was analysed using SPSS and R statistics with Structural equation modelling. The findings shown that electronic consumer empowerment influenced perceived trust, purchase intention, and the effects of data harvesting, which lead to online self-disclosures used in real-time predictions. The results reveal that while some e-consumers are aware of free data exploitation, most e-consumers do not notice that their online data is being harvested and exploited by online retailers. This paper illuminated the role of e-consumer empowerment in optimising data harvesting to improve personalised customer service in the data-driven digital economy. These findings may assist digitalised companies to initiate loyalty programmes to compensate e-consumers for data resource input.