Retail managers’ sociotechnical imaginaries of customer data and the privacy-personalisation tension

Purpose This paper examines how retail managers understand and approach issues of privacy and personalisation. Specifically, it explores how managers understand these issues in their daily work, how they envision their future development and how these understandings shape the actions that are considered possible or legitimate. Design/methodology/approach Adopting sociotechnical imaginaries as a theoretical lens, the paper draws on a thematic analysis of 21 semi-structured interviews with retail managers across 12 Swedish companies, representing diverse retail categories and roles. Findings Four imaginaries of personalisation-privacy are identified: value exchange maximisation, compliance focused risk mitigation, privacy as advantage and pragmatic market realism. The study shows how these collectively stabilised visions legitimise certain actions and foreclose others before deliberate choices are made, thereby shaping how managers interpret and approach the personalisation-privacy tension. Originality/value While previous literature on privacy and personalisation has primarily focused on consumers, regulations or conceptual frameworks, this paper examines how retail managers interpret and approach the tension between personalisation and privacy. It shows how privacy and personalisation strategies are shaped by competing collective visions that cut across organisational boundaries, coexisting within the same firm and across professional roles. In doing so, it contributes to research on privacy and personalisation in retail and offers a two-dimensional heuristic with practical diagnostic value for retail strategy.