Companies have good reason to collect information about customers. It enables them to target their most valuable prospects more effectively, tailor their offerings to individual needs, improve customer satisfaction and retention, and identify opportunities for new products or services. But even as more and more managers begin to build strategies based on capturing information about their customers, a major change is under way that may undermine their efforts. We believe that consumers are going to take ownership of information about themselves and demand value in exchange for it. As a result, negotiating with consumers for information will become costly and complex. That process has already begun to unfold, but it could take several years to play out across broad segments of customers and products.

It is no secret that consumers are becoming increasingly edgy about the amount and depth of information businesses collect about them. The popular press regularly chronicles the public’s growing concern about privacy in an information-rich era. More specifically, people are starting to realize that the information they have divulged so freely through their daily commercial transactions, financial arrangements, and survey responses has value, and that they get very little in exchange for that value. Why?...