Is personalization always better? A Quantitative study of personalization in e-mail advertising.

Sammanfattning: The new interactive web provides opportunities for companies to use personalization on a much broader scale than previously. Consumers are also benefiting from a more individualized marketing where the offers can be tailored to their specific preferences and sent to them directly through e-mail. However, there are not only advantages with personalized marketing, as some consumers perceive it to intrude too much on privacy. The purpose of this study is to examine whether consumer attitudes to different levels of personalization follow an inverted U-shape relationship. As a second step, we examine whether the fit between the consumer and the ad, due to the consumer's involvement in the product or area, influences attitudes when increasing the degree of personalization. We conducted a quantitative experiment where we approached three groups of consumers via e-mail, including ads with different degrees of personalization for every group. We tested the influence of fit by dividing the respondents within the groups according to their involvement in the product or area promoted in the ad. In line with the purpose, the results demonstrated that there is a level where too personalized content generates negative attitudes towards an ad. Furthermore, we found that there is an influence of fit on attitudes towards the product due to involvement, with more positive attitudes for consumers with high involvement in the product or area. The results suggest that companies should select an appropriate level of personalization and aim at maximizing the fit between consumers and ad message to avoid reactance.