CONSUMERS' PRIVACY AND MACROECONOMIC PERFORMANCES: AN EXPLORATORY ANALYSIS IN THE EUROPEAN UNION'S CONTEXT

The strong development of the direct communication media and their extensive employment in the direct marketing campaigns, as well as the increasing processing of the consumers' personal information has intensified the discussions on approaching the consumer's private space without affecting his or her privacy. An important part, actually the most significant one, of the studies conducted in the field address the topic mainly from the perspective of the individual consumer neglecting almost completely its macroeconomic perspective. The paper presents the results of an exploratory research of the associations between the consumers' privacy and the macroeconomic performances at the level of the European Union countries, based on primary and secondary data. The main conclusion states that there is a relationship, deserving an in-depth assessment, between disclosing personal information, as a part of a modern life, and two macroeconomic outputs: gross domestic product per capita and final consumption expenditures of the households.