Customers trust the S Group as a controller of personal data

Every year, we conduct a survey on our co-op members’ attitudes towards and opinions about how the S Group collects customer data and uses it for different purposes. We use the survey results in the development of our operations. The most recent survey results are from March 2020.

Most of the respondents trust that the S Group processes customer data with care and to the extent allowed by law (88% of the respondents stated that they fully or to some extent agree with this statement). The respondents are also confident that their customer data will not end up in the wrong hands (81%). Our customers want the S Group to be a trailblazer in the transparency of customer data and data protection (76%).

A clear majority of the respondents considers it useful or somewhat useful that purchase data is used in a variety of development measures, the targeting of communication and the development of services. The respondents deemed the following intended uses of purchase data the most useful or somewhat useful:

• Development of stores’ product ranges (82%).
• Identification and analysis of consumption trends and the development of new services on the basis of these (75%).
• Providing useful services, such as the My Purchases service, to customers based on their own data (70%).
• Targeting of communications (63%).

The share of customers who consider purchase data useful has slightly increased from the last survey. The greatest increase has occurred in the case of the provision of useful services, such as the My Purchases service, to customers based on their own data.

Increasing customer awareness

The survey results also indicate some clear development areas:

• 51% of the respondents knew that they can view the data collected on them by logging into Oma S-kanava
• 52% of the respondents knew that they can control the use of their personal data by providing various permissions and prohibitions
• 48% of the respondents knew that they can prohibit the collection of purchase data, apart from the sum total of their receipts
• 22% of the respondents stated that they did not obtain enough information on the processing of their customer data

When it comes to processing customer data, transparency is vital to us. We therefore strive to more actively provide information on the processing of personal data to our customers. For this reason, we renewed the S Group’s data protection website. We have also produced videos to explain the different ways in which purchase data is used. You can watch the videos by clicking here.

Survey implementation method: The survey is implemented once a year by sending an email to a randomised group of customers who have an S-Etukortti card. The most recent survey results are from March 2020. A total of 3,316 customers replied the survey at that time, and the respondent profile fairly well corresponded to the composition of the S Group co-op member and customer register. However, both co-op members under the age of 25 and those over the age of 75 were slightly underrepresented, and customers who use the S-mobiili mobile app were slightly overrepresented.