Legitimate Interests Policy
Legitimate interests
The new data protection requirements have a number of reasons by which we can use the personal information you provide to us. One of these is called ‘legitimate interests'.
This means that we have the potential to use your personal information if we have a genuine and legitimate reason and we are not harming any of your rights and interests. So, what does this mean? When you provide your personal details to us we may use your information to further communicate with you about a research project, your research enquiries, your interest in our services and past wrok we have conducted, and anything relating to our services. Before doing this, though, we will also carefully consider and balance any potential impact on you and your rights.
Some typical examples of when we might use the approach are for reaching out and making you aware of work we have done which may be of interest to you and your organisation, direct marketing, maintaining the security of our system, data analytics, enhancing, modifying or improving our services, identifying usage trends and determining the effectiveness of our campaigns.
How we may use your personal information
Market research enquiries: We will respond to your enquiries about our market research services. The information submitted (e.g. a project you wish to conduct) will be used to tailor a response to you (e.g. develop a proposal for how we will conduct a research project for you).
Direct Marketing: We will send email marketing which further the aims and objectives of the company. We will also make sure our postal marketing is relevant for you, tailored to your interests.
Your best interest: Processing your information to protect you when supplying information on our website, and to ensure our websites and systems are secure.
Personalisation: Where the use of the information enables us to personalise, enhance or otherwise improve our services/communications for the benefit of our clients.
Analytics: To use your personal information for the purposes of customer analysis, assessment, profiling and direct marketing, on a personalised or aggregated basis, to help us with our activities and to provide you with the most relevant information as long as this does not harm any of your rights and interests.
Research: To determine the effectiveness of promotional campaigns and advertising and to develop our products, services, systems and relationships with you.
Due Diligence: We need to undertake due diligence on potential clients and business partners to determine if those companies and individuals have been involved or convicted of offences such as fraud, bribery and corruption.
We will also hold information about you so that we can respect your preferences for being contacted by us.
Your interests
Before we use your personal information for our legitimate interests, we will always consider and balance any potential impact on you and your rights under data protection legislation and any other relevant law. Our legitimate business interests do not automatically override your interests – we will never use your personal data for activities where our interests are overridden by the impact on you (unless we have your consent or are otherwise required or permitted to by law).
Remember, you can change the way you hear from us or withdraw your permission for us to process your personal details at any time by using our contact form on the 'Contact Us' page.
This document was last updated: April 2024