What do consumers really think about advertising chasing them online? : A quantitative study about consumers’ perception of behavioural marketing

Sammanfattning: Behavioral marketing is something that has received lots of attention due to growing awareness around artificial intelligence (AI) and companies using this technology for marketing purposes. However, the data collection practices have been receiving lots of critique for a while now and therefore it is more important than ever to gain an insight of how the consumers perceive behavioral online marketing. From this standpoint two research questions have been developed: How do consumers’ attitudes towards behavioral marketing, affect their purchase intention? and How does exposure to behavioral marketing affects purchase intention? In order to answer these research questions, the experimental vignette methodology was used to study digital natives, namely individuals between 18 and 30 years old. The experiment provided the basis for the study combined with the questionnaire the participants were asked to complete after the experiment. The experiment process consisted of two purchase scenarios that had to be performed online: a purchase of a low degree behavioral marketing product (city bike) and a purchase of a high degree marketing product (sneakers). One of the most important findings of this research regarding consumers’ attitude’s impact on purchase intention was the fact that trust has a bigger impact on the high involvement products compared to the low involvement product. When it came to exposure to behavioral marketing, the test objects that were exposed to behavioral ads had a higher likelihood to purchase a sponsored item. Therefore, there is a positive relationship between how much behavioral marketing a company use and the likelihood of a user purchasing a sponsored item. One of the most important practical implications that can be derived from this study is that businesses need to prioritize building a strong brand image prior to utilizing behavioral marketing.