Blockchain for marketing? Maybe, but privacy issues abound
Blockchain’s permanent record is one of its strengths, but it can cause problems for marketing strategies and consumer privacy.
Faculty
Catherine Tucker is the Sloan Distinguished Professor of Management and a Professor of Marketing at MIT Sloan. She is the faculty director of the EMBA program. She has also been the Chair of the MIT Sloan PhD Program.
Her research interests lie in how technology allows firms to use digital data and machine learning to improve performance, and in the challenges this poses for regulation. Tucker has particular expertise in online advertising, digital health, social media, and electronic privacy. Her research studies the interface between marketing, the economics of technology, and law.
She has received an NSF CAREER Award for her work on digital privacy, the Erin Anderson Award for an Emerging Female Marketing Scholar and Mentor, the Garfield Economic Impact Award for her work on electronic medical records, the Paul E. Green Award for contributions to the practice of Marketing Research, the William F. O'Dell Award for most significant, long-term contribution to Marketing, and the INFORMS Society for Marketing Science Long Term Impact Award for long-run impact on marketing.
She is a cofounder of the MIT Cryptoeconomics Lab which studies the applications of blockchain. She has been a Visiting Fellow at All Souls College, Oxford. She has testified to Congress regarding her work on digital privacy and algorithms, and presented her research to the OECD, World Bank, IMF, and the ECJ.
Tucker is senior editor at Marketing Science. She has been coeditor at Quantitative Marketing and Economics and associate editor at Management Science, Marketing Science, and the Journal of Marketing Research. She is the codirector of the program on Digital Economics and Artificial Intelligence at the National Bureau of Economic Research.
She teaches MIT Sloan's course on Pricing and the EMBA course "Marketing Management for the Senior Executive." She has received the Jamieson Prize for Excellence in Teaching as well as being voted "Teacher of the Year" at MIT Sloan.
She holds a PhD in economics from Stanford University and a BA from the University of Oxford.
Tucker, Catherine. In Fair by Design, edited by Alex Teyteboym and Scott Kominers. Forthcoming.
Lambrecht, Anja and Catherine Tucker. Quantitative Marketing and Economics Vol. 22, No. 4 (2024): 357-387.
Neumann, Nico, Catherine Tucker, Levi Kaplan, Alan Mislove, and Piotr Sapiezynski. Management Science Vol. 70, No. 11 (2024): 8003-8029.
Luo, Cheng, Zhenhui (Jack) Jiang, Xiuping Li, Cheng Yi, and Catherine Tucker. Management Science Vol. 70, No. 10 (2024): 6983-7003.
Basavaraj, Naveen, Uttara M Ananthakrishnan, and Catherine Tucker, MIT Sloan Working Paper 7156-24. Cambridge, MA: MIT Sloan School of Management, August 2024.
Goldfarb, Avi and Catherine Tucker. Chicago, IL: University of Chicago Press, 2024.
Blockchain’s permanent record is one of its strengths, but it can cause problems for marketing strategies and consumer privacy.
Researchers analyzed 110 million YouTube comments. Their recommendation: Use algorithms to hide toxic speech, then follow up with human review.
"It matters when you see a competitor that's not part of this case actually say we're competing against Google Play."
Removing harmful social media platforms from the internet may push users to seek out other, more extreme outlets.
"Algorithmic exclusion occurs when algorithms are unable to even make predictions because they lack the data to so."
"The risk is that companies will use blockchain methods to record transactions without even caring whether the information ... is true."
This online program draws on the work of leading MIT faculty and cryptoeconomics expert, Professor Christian Catalini, to examine blockchain technology from an economic perspective. You’ll be offered a foundational overview of how blockchain technology works, in order to demystify the technology and to understand its possibilities and limitations. Over the course of six weeks, you’ll be guided to understand blockchain technology beyond the fundamentals, and to appreciate its application and promise in the context of your own organization.
This course provides you with a balanced perspective of the crypto space. Over eight weeks, you’ll gain insights into the economics of blockchain technologies, including digital assets, stablecoins, DeFi, NFTs, and Web 3 applications. You’ll also learn about the future of blockchain technology and the possibilities that lie ahead in the crypto space — from finance to the metaverse.