Communicating Legal Information to Online Customers Transparently: A Multidisciplinary Multistakeholderist Perspective.

Transparency has occupied a central place in the marketing management literature since the early 2000s, and its rise relates closely to the paradigm shift in corporate marketing, from consumer seduction to consumer engagement. In this paper we address the concept of transparency from the perspectives of law, communication science, and corporate marketing. Given that it is unclear how transparency can be achieved in practice, we conducted a qualitative empirical investigation among stakeholders of the transparency of legal information written by businesses for consumers, which has been an essential part of EU consumer legislation since the 1990s, with a view to further refining and concretizing this concept. We carried out 75 interviews with stakeholders in Germany, the largest national consumer market in the European Union. The results reveal the principles and benefits of transparent online consumer information according to these stakeholders and provide guidance for businesses and marketing professionals who wish to improve the clarity and accessibility of their online disclosures. The study concludes with an annotated, actionable definition of the transparency concept in corporate marketing. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]