Why Consumers Stay Loyal To Hacked Brands

It looks like the conventional wisdom of the last few years — that big hacks lead to big waves of customer defections — is turning out to be less right that one might assume.

According to new data released by RAND researchers, consumers whose personal data has been compromised generally don’t feel much in the way of dissatisfaction over it —  77 percent of notified victims reported being content with how the company handled the breach and its follow-up notification. Only about 11 percent moved on to a different firm.

This is likely good news for the ever-expanding number of hacked firms in the U.S — as of the latest stats, from a quarter to a third of all American consumers have had their data compromised since 2014.

Why do customers stay or go? This the research was less explicit about — some customers seem to shrug off fraud as a cost of doing business, others report needing the good or service on offer and being less concerned about things like breaches in general.

The RAND survey also found that 44 percent of the time, victims first learned of a breach through a source other than the breached firm — usually news reports.  Consumers also didn’t seem too concerned about actually doing what breached firms ask them to do — almost half of all consumers (49 percent) noted they did not change their password after a reported breach.

As for how to generate “positive” breach experiences — the survey found that prompt alerts and frequent updates generally led to the highest level of consumer reviews.