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Privacy Policy

Last updated: 1/1/2020

PRIVACY POLICY
Applied Marketing Science, Inc. (“AMS”, “us”, “we”, “our”) is a market research and consulting firm that conducts qualitative and quantitative research studies. AMS also operates the websites www.ams-inc.com, www.ams-insights.com, and www.ams-litigation.com. This privacy policy explains how we collect, use, store and transfer data that we obtain from website visitors, clients, survey respondents, vendors and other methods of research.

If you are visiting our website or are participating in one of our research studies from inside the United States and you have any concerns about the information we collect, store or use, please contact AMS at:
inquiry@ams-inc.com, 888-304-8386, or by mail at:
Attn: Privacy Department
Applied Marketing Science, Inc.
10 Mall Road, Suite 265
Burlington, MA 01803

If you are visiting our website or are participating in one of our research studies from outside the United States, please be aware that your information may be transferred to, stored in and/or processed in the United States and we will take the necessary steps to ensure that your privacy is protected. Additionally, we have taken steps to comply with the EUs General Data Protection Regulations (GDPR). The details can be found in Section 7 of this Privacy Policy.

1. What is Protected Personal Information
Personally Identifiable Information (PII) (Personal Data (PD) in the EU) is any type of information that is recorded in any form, that is about or pertains to a specific individual (you) and can be identified specifically to you. It may include your first name, last name, identification numbers, date of birth, gender, mailing address, phone numbers, email address and other similar information. It may include information about your opinions and preferences. PII generally does NOT include your business title, address, phone number, fax or email in your capacity as an employee. In some jurisdictions, it does not include any publicly available information. We may collect PII from you directly when you voluntarily provide it or we may obtain PII from clients who ask us to conduct research on their behalf. We may also obtain PII from list providers who have assured us that their lists are made up only of individuals who have given their consent to be included in the list. Finally, we may collect and use PII obtained from publicly available sources, where permitted by law.

“Sensitive personal data” can mean PD that pertains to attributes such as race, ethnic origin, sexual orientation, political opinions, religious or philosophical beliefs, trade union membership or that concerns an individual’s health.

2. Protection of Information Collected through Research Studies
Market research is used by many organizations to obtain information and perceptions from non-customers, current customers, product users, non-products users, the general public, and other stakeholders. The information collected in research studies may be used to plan or improve new products or services, gauge customer satisfaction, measure awareness and familiarity of products or services, or to test reaction to products, services or communications.

Most research surveys and questionnaires include demographic questions such as racial or ethnic origin, age, gender or income. We use these questions to ensure the research results reflect a representative sample of the population we are studying. We understand, however, if you are not comfortable answering certain questions. We may occasionally collect information that is legally considered more sensitive, “sensitive personal data” as described above. In such instances, we will fully comply with legal restrictions on the collection, storage, use and transfer of such information. We will never ask you for certain information which, if stolen or misused, could result in crimes against you, such as account numbers of passports, bank accounts, credit cards, social security or any other government-issued ID.

Unless you have provided consent to do otherwise, we will protect the anonymity of your responses and feedback from questionnaires, interviews, focus groups, online surveys, and other means of collecting feedback. If we obtain your contact information from a research panel or other third party, we will comply with the contact limitations and data protections that you agreed to when you signed-up to participate in survey research or when you became a customer of a third party. We may occasionally re-contact you to validate your participation in a research study; we will identify ourselves and our purpose when we conduct such validation contacts.

3. Protection and Security of Information Provided by Users of Our Website
Our websites are only intended to collect business information from our visitors. If you provide PII to us when you contact us through our websites, we will treat this information as confidential PII. The security of your personal information is important to us but remember that no method of transmission over the Internet, or method of electronic storage, is 100% secure. While we strive to use commercially acceptable means to protect your personal information, we cannot guarantee its absolute security. If your personal information is subject to a security breach and there is a reasonably likely risk of identity theft, we will make all reasonable attempts to notify you within 72 hours, or within the timeframe required by law.

4. Types of Data Collection
The following is a list of the types of data and methods that may be collected from you by our staff, on our website or during a market research study:

  • Data you entered on pages or forms on our website;
  • Data/information you send to us via phone, email or other means;
  • Incentive/honorarium fulfillment details including name, address and email address
  • Information during in-person interviews, phone interviews or focus groups including name
  • We may be collecting your IP address during online surveys
  • We may be collecting your IP address when you visit our website
    • Widgets – Some of our websites may include social media features, such as a Twitter feed. These features may collect your IP address, which page you are visiting on our site, and may set a cookie to enable the feature to function properly. Social media features and widgets are either hosted by a third party or directly on one of our sites. Your interactions with these features are governed by the privacy policy of the company providing the feature.
  • Cookies and data usage:
    • Cookies are files with small amount of data, which may include an anonymous unique identifier. Cookies are sent to your browser from a web site and stored on your computer’s hard drive. Like many sites, we use “cookies” to collect information that is used to analyze trends, administer the site, track user site movements and gather demographic information. You can instruct your browser to refuse all cookies or to indicate when a cookie is being sent. However, if you do not accept cookies, you may not be able to use some portions of our Sites. To manage Flash cookies, visit http://www.macromedia.com/support/documentation/en/flashplayer/help/settings_manager07.html

We may also receive the following data about you from clients or third parties:

  • Name
  • Mailing address
  • Email address
  • Phone number
  • Place of employment
  • Job title
  • Names of products, services or memberships purchased

5. How We Use Information You Provide
If you provide your information to us through our websites or by other means to inquire about our services, we will only use that information to contact you about our services or content and information that you agreed to.

If we receive your contact information from a list or panel company, we will only that information for the purpose of a market research study, to validate answers you gave or to follow-up on a request. We select panel companies that adhere to an opt-in process for obtaining panelists and have an adequate policy for protecting the privacy of panelists. We will not use your information in any other way that is inconsistent with the research or purposes for which you agreed to be contacted. We may share your PII with employees of our company to analyze survey responses.

If we receive your contact information from a client and you are a customer of that client, we will only use your contact information to ask you to participate in market research for that client. We will protect your anonymity when communicating your research responses to clients unless you have explicitly given permission for your identity and contact information to be shared with our client or if you have specifically asked us to give that information to our client so that they may resolve questions or complaints you may have.

Whether we obtain your PII from a list company or from clients, we will not use this information to sell you any goods or services; we will not provide your contact information to any other party so that they may use that contact information to directly sell you goods or services; and we will not sell, trade, rent or provide your information to any third party for any other use.

AMS reserves the right to disclose an individual’s PII in order to comply with the law, enforce our website/business policies, protect your safety or the safety of others, investigate fraud, respond to a government request or when information is pursuant to court orders or law enforcement request (ie – search warrants, subpoena, court order, discovery request or any pending litigation). If AMS is involved in a merger, acquisition or sale, you will be notified via email and/or prominent notice on our website of any change in ownership or uses of your personal information, as well as any choices you may have regarding your personal information. PII will not be provided to other parties for marketing, advertising, or other uses. Additionally, we will never disclose any personally identifiable or financial information related to payment activities.

6. California Residents Rights Under CCPA
California residents may have the following additional rights under the California Consumer Privacy Act (CCPA) effective January 1, 2020.

You have the right to know what personal information we collect and process.
• See Sections 2- 4 above for details on what information we may collect on you and by what methods.
• See Section 5 above for details on how we may use the information collected about you.

You have the right to request that we send you the following information for free, twice per year. Upon receiving a verifiable consumer request, AMS will respond within 45 days.
• The categories of personal information we have collected about you
• The categories of sources from which we collected the personal information
• Our business or commercial purpose for collecting personal information
• The categories of third parties with whom we share personal information
• The specific pieces of personal information we have collected about you

You have the right to request that we delete the information we have collected about you. However, in certain cases AMS may need to retain your personal information in order to:
• Detect or resolve security issues or functionality-related issues
• Comply with the law or an ongoing litigation matter
• Conduct research in the public interest
• Safeguard the right to free speech
• Carry out any actions for internal purposes that may be reasonable expected

You have the right to request that we do not sell any of your personal information.
Please note: AMS does not currently sell any (including California) personal information as defined by the CCPA and has not sold any personal information in the past 12 months.

We will not discriminate against you for exercising your privacy rights under the CCPA by doing any of the following in response:
• Deny you goods or services.
• Charge you different prices or rates for goods or services, including through the use of discounts or other benefits, or imposing penalties.
• Provide you a different level or quality of goods or services.
• Suggest that you may receive a different price or rate for goods or services or a different level or quality of goods or services.

7. GDPR
How We Will Use the Data Collected and the Justification
The use of your PD under EU data protection laws requires that a specific justification be determined as the legal grounds for each use. The justifications used by us as detailed in the GDPR are referenced above in Sections 2-4.

When we collect PD from you, we will notify you of the purpose for which we are collecting and using your PD and the type of non-agent third parties to which we disclose or may disclose that information. You will be provided with the choice and means for limiting the use and disclosure of your PD. This Notice will be provided in clear and conspicuous language when you are first asked to provide PD, or as soon as practicable thereafter, and in any event before we use or disclose the information for a purpose other than for which it was originally collected.

We describe in detail above the types of information we collect and how we will use it. In some circumstances, to gain your participation in Internet-based, telephone or in-person survey research, we may transfer your name and email address or your name and telephone number to a market research field service facility, to a professional interviewer located in your home country, or to a company that operates Internet based research platform. Before we disclose your PD to a third party, we will ensure that any third party to which PD may be disclosed subscribes to the GDPR or is subject to the laws providing the same level of privacy protection as is required and agrees in writing to provide an adequate level of privacy protection. In some circumstances, with your permission and where it is legal to do so, we may transfer your name and email address to a fulfillment company to send you an incentive for participating in survey research. Before doing so we will ensure that the fulfillment company provides and agrees in writing to provide an adequate level of protection for your personal data and will not use it for any other purpose. If you provide personal data in a survey or other research instrument to which you are responding, we will anonymize your response and will not supply any information that could personally identify you to any other entity, including our clients, without your permission.

Your GDPR Rights:
• Right to Access: You have the right to request if your PD is being processed by us and request a copy of your data if that is the case.
• Right to Rectification: You have the right to access your PD and to correct, amend or delete inaccurate information, except where the burden or expense of providing access would be disproportionate to the risks to your privacy in the case in question or where the rights of persons other than you would be violated.
• Right to Erasure: You have the right to request that your PD be deleted unless doing so would cause a legal issue, in which case we will notify you in writing.
• Right to Restrict Processing: You have the right to request that we restrict processing your PD.
• Right to Object to Processing: You have the right to object our company’s processing of your PD.
• Right of Data Portability: You have the right to request a copy of your PD from us or that we transfer a copy of your PD to another process where legally allowable and technically feasible.
• You have the right to file a complaint with a supervisory authority such as the Information Commissioners Office in the UK.

8. How Long We Will Keep Your Information
All research data collected is used strictly for the purposes of market research unless otherwise clearly explained.
When the research for a survey has been completed, data collection is formally closed, and findings are communicated to our clients, all PI and PII will be deleted within 180 days of the project closing date. PII collected for research studies that are pending litigation will not be deleted until the earlier of 180 days after final litigation or upon attorney request for file destruction.

9. Information Security
AMS maintains an ISO 27001 and ISO 27018 certified ISMS with all the necessary physical, electronic and procedural measures to help safeguard client data and personal data. Third parties that provide us with support or services may also receive client data or personal data, and we require them to maintain security measures similar to ours with respect to such information.

10. Data Integrity and Purpose Limitation
We will only process PII in a way that is compatible with and relevant to the purpose for which it was collected or authorized by you. To the extent necessary for those purposes, we will take reasonable steps to ensure that your PII is accurate, complete, current and reliable for its intended use. We will limit use of your PII to the use we disclosed to you when we collected it. Prior to using any PII for another purpose, we will notify you and obtain your permission.

11. Children’s Privacy
Our websites and research do not direct any services or surveys to children and we do not knowingly collect or store any personal information about children under the age of 16. If we gain actual knowledge that a child under the age of 16 has provided any personal data to us without the parent’s or guardian’s consent, we will use that information only to respond directly to that child to inform him or her that we must have parental consent before receiving his or her personal data.

12. Links to Other Web Sites
Our Service may contain links to third party websites or services that are not owned or controlled by AMS. AMS has no control over, and assumes no responsibility for, the content, privacy policies, or practices of any third-party web sites or services. You further acknowledge and agree that AMS shall not be responsible or liable, directly or indirectly, for any damage or loss caused or alleged to be caused by or in connection with use of or reliance on any such content, goods or services available on or through any such web sites or services. We strongly advise you to read the privacy policies of any third-party web sites or services that you visit.
HubSpot is an email marketing and sales platform that AMS uses to send content and emails to subscribers. For more information on the privacy practices of Hubspot, please visit https://legal.hubspot.com/privacy-policy.

13. Opting-Out and Controlling Your Personal Information
If a User decides to opt-in to our mailing list, they may receive emails that include company news, updates, related product or service information, blogs, articles, etc. If at any time a User would like to unsubscribe from receiving future emails, we include unsubscribe instructions at the bottom of each email. You may also unsubscribe, view or change any of your personal information at any time by emailing your request to inquiry@ams-inc.com.

14. Changes to this Privacy Notice
By using the AMS websites, you accept the terms of the Privacy Policy. If you do not agree to this policy, please do not access our websites. Your continued use of the website will be deemed your acceptance of use. This Privacy Notice may be amended from time to time. We will post any revised policy on our website.

AMS commits to resolve complaints about your privacy and our collection or use of your personal data. Inquiries or complaints regarding this Privacy Notice should first contact AMS by emailing Inquiry@ams-inc.com or writing to us at:
Attn: Privacy Department
Applied Marketing Science, Inc.
10 Mall Road, Ste 265
Burlington, MA 01803
inquiry@ams-inc.com
888-304-8386

Last updated: 1/1/2020

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