Most marketers and customer intelligence (CI) pros tend to lump together most types of customer data. Sure, things like passwords and social security numbers are considered more "sensitive," but for the most part, the systems that protect all the data -- and the privacy policies that communicate their capture and governance -- are largely the same.

This model used to work just fine. But in an era where consumers are becoming increasingly aware of data capture, data breaches, and the value of personal data, it's not enough to treat all data (nor all customers) the same. In researching our latest report, "Personal Identity Management Success Starts With Customer Understanding," we found that:

• Individuals see different types of data differently -- they're most worried about what we consider individual identity data, and far less concerned about the capture and use of their behavioral data. 
• Most consumers are willing to share their data in exchange for value. But, what they consider "valuable" is very age-dependent -- in other words, the same consumer isn't equally motivated by discounts and cash rewards. 
• A surprising number of consumers "just say no" if a privacy policy doesn't pass their sniff test, and the numbers seem to be rising. 

In the current time of digital disruption, market insights professionals need to know the market their organization plays in well enough to identify the “adjacent possible” but also to understand how receptive their customers are to new offerings. With that in mind, I’ve taken a fresh look at Forrester’s Technographics® segmentation. This segmentation is built on three main components: motivation, income, and technology optimism/pessimism using a proprietary algorithm and is created in 1997 when we first began collecting our Technographics® data to help companies understand and predict changes in the consumer technology landscape. In 1999, Forrester published a book, called 'Now or Never', that covered how companies should use the model. 

Recently I was wondering: does the segmentation still hold for current technologies like tablets and can it still help companies understand and predict technology behaviors? For this, I analyzed tablet uptake as well as buying intention of tablet from one of our European surveys by segment:

I’d like to share with you some of the highlights from our annual The State Of Consumers And Technology: Benchmark 2011, US report. This data-rich report is an institution in the US, covering a range of topics on consumers and technology. For those of you who aren't familiar with our benchmark report, it's based on Forrester's annual survey that we've been fielding since 1998 and for which we interview close to 60,000 US adults. In fact, almost anything related to consumers and their use of and interest in technology can be found in this study.

In this year’s report, like last year, we segmented consumers by generation, examining Gen Z, Gen Y, Gen X, Younger Boomers, Older Boomers, and the Golden Generation. This view continues to provide some very interesting and actionable consumer insights into how technology behaviors vary across generations. For example, younger generations are more active on social networks; however, of those Boomers who are using social media, a similar percentage has a Facebook account or a LinkedIn account as their younger counterparts. The younger generations are far more likely to have a Twitter or MySpace account, though.

The theme of this year’s report is connectivity: How are the different generations using technology inside and outside the home and which devices do they use? Here are a few interesting general insights that we uncovered:

One of the responsibilities of my role includes analyzing data in complex ways to help our clients understand how their target groups behave and if there are more relevant ways to segment them based on the results. However, sometimes it just makes sense to take a step back and look at some basic demographic profiles as a starting point for further analysis. We developed a new deliverable that we call Demographic Overview, and we kicked off the series with digital dads, followed by digital moms, and these will soon be complemented with digital natives and digital Seniors.

So why is it important for companies to look at dads? Forrester’s Technographics® data shows that s lightly more than one-third of US online men ages 18 to 50 are parents of a child younger than 18 living with them. Companies need to understand how the digital profile of dads differs from non-dads, as their behaviors influence the tech behaviors of their kids.

Some of our findings include that in general, dads are more likely to use the Internet as a resource, while non-dads are more active in entertainment-focused activities such as social networking. But dads know how to use social media to get their point across: 72% of dads who regularly engage in social activities have posted a review of a product or service on Twitter in the past 12 months, as compared with only 57% of non-dads.