A Framework for Valuing Web Site Personalization

ABSTRACT

Web related initiatives are a viable method for many companies seeking to enhance their customer focus. Web personalization is a technique that can be used by firms to develop and foster relationships with their customers. Web personalization may not be suitable for all types of businesses. Web personalization is used to generate individualized content for each visitor. Personalization techniques include content filtering, collaborative filtering, and a rules-based engine approach. The scope and technique chosen for the personalization initiative determine the resources required for successful implementation. This paper presents a framework to help firms ascertain the value of web personalization. The components of the framework include the ability to classify the popular features of the website, the degree the product is considered personal, the competitiveness of the market, and the value customers place on personalization. A survey was conducted and results of the survey are presented to help determine factors that influence an individual's value for personalization. The factors we found that influence the value an individual places on personalization include: sites that belong to an established brick and mortar company, sites that let visitors download music, and sites that offer the possibility of winning something. The first two factors were found to positively impact the value an individual places on personalization, while the ability to win something was found to have a negative impact on personalization. We also found that education played a part in determining whether an individual values personalization. Other characteristics such as age group and gender were found not to influence an individual's value for personalization.     

Unraveling the Personalization Paradox: The Effect of Information Collection and Trust-Building Strategies on Online Advertisement Effectiveness

Retailers gather data about customers’ online behavior to develop personalized service offers. Greater personalization typically increases service relevance and customer adoption, but paradoxically, it also may increase customers’ sense of vulnerability and lower adoption rates. To demonstrate this contradiction, an exploratory field study on Facebook and secondary data about a personalized advertising campaign indicate sharp drops in click-through rates when customers realize their personal information has been collected without their consent. To investigate the personalization paradox, this study uses three experiments that confirm a firm's strategy for collecting information from social media websites is a crucial determinant of how customers react to online personalized advertising. When firms engage in overt information collection, participants exhibit greater click-through intentions in response to more personalized advertisements, in contrast with their reactions when firms collect information covertly. This effect reflects the feelings of vulnerability that consumers experience when firms undertake covert information collection strategies. Trust-building marketing strategies that transfer trust from another website or signal trust with informational cues can offset this negative effect. These studies help unravel the personalization paradox by explicating the role of information collection and its impact on vulnerability and click-through rates.     

Collaborating online: the roles of interactivity and personalization

Collaborating with customers is considered a new source of competitive advantage so customer participation and involvement are emerging as key strategic factors. This research studies how interactivity and personalization influence both customers' participation during the online purchase of information services and their intentions to continue participating. It also analyzes whether personalization and interactivity improve customer involvement with the service purchased in online environments. Results verify the importance of interactivity and personalization to foster customer participation, involvement and intentions to continue participating. Moreover, it is found that interactivity moderates the effect of personalization, increasing its influence on service involvement and intentions to participate. This paper demonstrates the convenience of analyzing involvement and participation together in order to understand customer collaboration, as well as the importance of the purchase context from a participation and socialization perspective in the services arena.     

Message‐to‐person versus person‐to‐message: An alternative way to conceptualize personalized advertising

This study provides an alternative way to conceptualize personalized advertising and discusses when and why nonpersonalized information can be more effective than personalized information in changing people's attitudes and behavioral intentions. Different from the traditional personalization approach in the literature that personalizes a message for an individual, this alternative way of thinking is to personalize an individual for a message. It is argued that an individual can be personalized for a message via priming tactics and it leads to reverse personalization effects where a nonpersonalized message generates stronger persuasion effects than a personalized message. The effects of priming on personalization are moderated by perceived prime credibility and mediated by perceived message relevance.     

Sense and sensibility in personalized e‐commerce: How emotions rebalance the purchase intentions of persuaded customers

This research develops and tests a theoretical model of customer persuasion in personalized online shopping, building on information processing theory, and addressing cognitive and affective stages of the persuasion process. Data from 582 experienced online customers were used to validate the proposed model through structural equation modeling and multigroup analysis. Results show that quality of personalization, message quality, and benefits of the personalized recommendations are important in the persuasion process. Positive emotions increase the effect of persuasion on purchase intentions, contrary to negative emotions. The study extends online personalization theory, offers an in‐depth analysis of the persuasion process in online shopping, and provides valuable recommendations for personalized online marketing.     

Personalization has a Price,Controllability is the Currency: Predictors for the Intention to use Personalized eGovernment Websites

Content personalization on government websites provides individuals with a personal selection of information. In this study, we determine the role of trust in a government organization, trust in the technology, and perceived controllability on the intention to use content personalization for eGovernment websites. A total of 1141 participants were presented with scenarios describing a nonpersonalized webpage and one of four approaches to online content personalization, followed by an online survey. Results were analyzed by means of structural equation modeling. Perceived controllability is the most important antecedent of the intention to use online content personalization for eGovernment; trust in the technology also has a considerable influence. Trust in the government organization plays a minor role. The adaptable approach to online content personalization has the highest likelihood of citizen acceptance. When designing personalized eGovernment information services, designers should instill a feeling of controllability over the coming about of tailored content and trust in the technology.     

Determinants of an Organization’s Website Ease of Use: The Moderating Role of Product Tangibility

The ease of use of an organization’s website is central to determining users’ experiences and behavioral intentions. Understanding how the site-related factors contribute to shaping perceived ease of use is thus critical. Nonetheless, we contend that the relative importance of these factors in shaping ease of use may vary according to the product offered by the organization. This research hypothesizes that the information quality of a website and its interactivity and aesthetics are antecedents to perceived ease of use and that the relative tangibility of the offered products moderates these relationships. The hypotheses are examined by performing a large-scale study in which each participant performs a task on one of 59 organizational websites. The study’s hypotheses were supported, and the results were then replicated using a second study conducted on a French-speaking sample. Site information quality is the strongest predictor of perceived ease of use, followed by the site interactivity and aesthetics. The results, however, underscore the moderating role of product tangibility. While the effects of interactivity and aesthetics are greater for sites offering services (e.g., communication, travel, insurance, and financial services), the effect of information quality is stronger for sites offering tangible products (e.g., electronics, books, and home improvement goods). The findings suggest that organizations offering tangible products should focus on providing their sites’ visitors with quality information, whereas organizations offering services should primarily focus on their sites’ aesthetics, interactive, and personalization features.     

Developing Consumer-Based Service Brand Equity via the Internet: The Role of Personalization and Trialability

The commercialization of the Internet has provided opportunities for building service brands in the minds of consumers. Services are characterized as intangible, heterogeneous, inseparable, and perishable features that often engender high information costs and, hence, low perceived value to potential consumers. When a service is available via the Internet—a medium that can subdivide and rebuild the service into personalized offerings—potential consumers become better informed in advance of what the service provides. The Internet also permits most services to be trialable before consumption. These new features, empowered by the Internet, have important implications for what we call consumer-based service brand equity (CSBE), the value that potential consumers assign to a service brand. This article investigates the effects of service personalization and trialability on the development of CSBE of Internet banking service, a typical service available via the Internet. Results from a laboratory experiment indicate that both service personalization and trialability have significant positive influences on the development of the CSBE of an Internet banking service brand. While personalization was found to indirectly influence CSBE development by mediating the perceived benefits of the brand, trialability exerted both a direct and an indirect effect. Trialability developed the brand's CSBE by first mediating the information through gathering cost savings and then the perceived benefits of the brand. Implications of the study's results are discussed.     

Culture, product type, and price influences on consumer purchase intention to buy personalized products online

With personalization, consumers can choose from various product attributes and a customized product is assembled based on their preferences. Marketers often offer personalization on websites. This paper investigates consumer purchase intentions toward personalized products in an online selling situation.The research builds and tests three hypotheses: (1) intention to purchase personalized products will be affected by individualism, uncertainty avoidance, power distance, and masculinity dimensions of a national culture; (2) consumers will be more likely to buy personalized search products than experience products; and (3) intention to buy a personalized product will not be influenced by price premiums up to some level. Results indicate that individualism is the only culture dimension to have a significant effect on purchase intention. Product type and individualism by price interaction also have a significant effect, whereas price does not. Major findings and implications are discussed.     

参与强度与顾客体验间的调节机制研究——基于集体参与视角

顾客参与企业的产品或服务的生产已经成为近年来学者们的关注热点,虽然目前从个体视角对顾客参与共同生产的研究成果颇丰,但仍然缺少集体层面的研究,特别是涉及顾客参与强度的研究并不多。文章从集体参与的视角探讨顾客参与强度对顾客体验的影响,并研究了关系价值和感知胜任力两个变量对顾客参与强度与顾客体验关系的影响。研究结果发现顾客参与强度会对顾客体验产生消极影响,而关系价值和感知胜任力能够弱化这种消极影响。     

Personalized charity advertising. Can personalized prosocial messages promote empathy,attitude change,and helping intentions toward stigmatized social groups?

This study examines the role of personalized charity advertising in promoting empathy, attitude change, and helping intentions toward stigmatized social groups. Based on theories of message involvement, empathy, and reactance, we predicted that higher levels of involvement elicited by a personalized charity advertisement would reinforce empathy and prosocial outcomes. An online experiment was conducted using a personalized and a nonpersonalized version of a charity advertisement for a campaign soliciting donations of winter coats for homeless people. As expected, structural equation modeling revealed a positive indirect effect of personalization on prosocial outcomes (attitudes and behavioural intentions toward homeless people, and willingness to donate to the campaign) that was mediated by involvement and empathy. However, in addition to promoting involvement and empathy, personalization also led to heightened reactance, which detracted from the positive effects. Theoretical as well as practical implications of the findings for personalized charity advertising are discussed.     

Getting too personal: Reactance to highly personalized email solicitations

Research on the effects of personalized messages on consumers’ behavioral responses has yielded mixed findings. We explore how e-mail personalization influences click-through intentions. Our results suggest that consumers experience personalization reactance in response to highly personalized messages when the fit between the offer in the message and consumers’ personal characteristics is not explicitly justified by firms. Consequently, consumers are less willing to respond favorably to the offer. Results of two studies suggest that this effect primarily emerges for consumers who perceive the utility of the service to be relatively low. For those consumers with higher perceived utility, justification of personalization is less important because highly personalized messages are less likely to elicit reactance.     

The Impact of a Third-Party Assurance Seal in Customer Purchasing Intention

ABSTRACT

Although e-commerce is evolving at an incredible speed, asymmetric information and opportunism have increased online purchasing risks and market inefficiencies. The lack of face-to-face contact and the inability of the customer to touch and feel tangible products necessitate that online business must provide customers with reliable information and convince customers of their trustworthiness. While the research on Third-Party Assurance Seals (TPAS) is not new, the effectiveness of TPAS has not been persuasively addressed by empirical studies. Our study is different from previous efforts in that it is comprehensive because it combines consumer trust, perceived risk, and influences of TPAS in the B2C e-commerce context. The results of the study show that (1) the effects of TPAS on perceived risk are channeled through perceived trustworthiness, thus demonstrating the mediating role of perceived trustworthiness in B2C e-commerce, (2) perceived risk, perceived usefulness of website, and subjective norm appear to be significant predictors of intention to purchase from the website, (3) a third-party assurance seal strongly affects online shoppers' perceived trustworthiness toward online retailers, while the seal appears to have little effect on perceived risk directly; perceived risk is strongly associated with intention to purchase from the website.     

How Does Web Personalization Create Value for Online Retailers? Lower Cash Flow Volatility or Enhanced Cash Flows

This study examines the performance consequences of web personalization (WP), a type of personalization in which web content is personalized and recommendations are offered based on customer preferences. Despite the growing popularity of personalization, there is a dearth of research at the firm level on whether and how web personalization creates shareholder value. We develop and test a conceptual model that proposes that the impact of WP on shareholder value is mediated by (1) cash flow volatility and (2) premium price. The hypotheses are tested based on 603 firm-quarter observations spanning 80 firms over six years in the online financial services industry. The results suggest that while WP lowers the volatility of cash flows, it only enables firms to charge premium prices when online trust is high. Additional tests reveal that the reduction in cash flow volatility is because of lower churn as opposed to acquiring new customers or greater cross-buying. Finally, online trust positively moderates the relationships between WP and cash flow volatility and price premia. Practical implications of the findings are discussed.     

A New Architecture for Personalization Engines: An Open Source Approach

There are many benefits in having personalized engines on a Web site. Several types of architecture have evolved to support this information system. Even though, a recent survey has shown that online shopping behavior is not altered by installing these systems on a Web site, enormous money is being spent on their use. These commercial personalization engines are very expensive to buy and are proprietary in nature. One alternative advocated in this article is to use a new architecture that follows an open source philosophy and uses a situation questions, problem questions, implication questions, need-payoff questions (SPIN) based question-answering strategy to interact with visitors. An implementation (called JESPER, a Jess-enabled personalization system) of such an architecture using JESS (Java-based expert system shell) is also presented. Our experience shows that personalization engines built this way for a Web site can be quite cheap and rigorous.     

CUSTOMER SERVICE IN THE INTERNET‐ENABLED LOGISTICS SUPPLY CHAIN: WEBSITE DESIGN ANTECEDENTS AND LOYALTY EFFECTS

This article extends the existing research on logistics customer service‐loyalty relationships to the online logistics supply chain environment by examining potential website determinants of logistics customer service quality. A structural equation analysis of 373 online shopping transactions suggests that perceived quality of all logistics customer service activities (perceived cycle time, in‐stock availability, and customer responsiveness) varies inversely with: (1) perceived ease of use, and (2) content vividness of the website; and positively with product information content. However, only retailer customer responsiveness assessment was found to have any significant influence on consumer intended loyalty behavior in Internet‐enabled supplies chains.     

基于组合赋权的银行信用评价模型研究

信用评级是商业银行对客户偿债能力和偿债意愿的计量和评价,反映了客户违约风险的大小。通过对评价指标的海选和筛选构建了信用综合评价指标体系,用客观赋权的离差最大化法和主观赋权的组合确定指标最优权重,建立了基于组合赋权方法的银行信用评价模型。通过组合赋权,既保留了客观赋权对实际情况的真实反映,又反映了主观赋权体现了专家的知识与经验。     

The smarter,the better?! Customer well-being,engagement, and perceptions in smart service systems

Smart service systems – that is, configurations of smart products and service providers that deliver smart services – are striving to increase the smartness of their offering, but potential consequences for customer well-being are largely overlooked. Therefore, this research investigates the impact of smartness on customer well-being (here, self-efficacy and technology anxiety) through (1) customer engagement with different smart service system actors (here, smart products and service providers) and (2) customer perceptions (here, personalization and intrusiveness perceptions) and their associated importance (here, need for personalization and intrusiveness sensitivity). A scenario-based experiment (n = 730) – which is preceded by a systematic review to conceptualize smartness – shows that customers perceive more personalization than intrusiveness in case of higher levels of smartness, resulting in customer engagement with the smart product and to some extent with the service provider. Via customer engagement with the smart product, higher levels of smartness stimulate self-efficacy, especially for customers with a high need for personalization. When customers' need for personalization is high and their intrusiveness sensitivity is low, higher levels of smartness also reduce technology anxiety via customer engagement with the smart product. Hence, the conclusion is: “The smarter, the better!”, whereby the relationship between smartness and well-being (here, self-efficacy and technological anxiety) is significantly influenced by customer heterogeneity. These findings help business practitioners in boosting customer well-being by increasing customer engagement through higher levels of smartness of their service system.     

企业支持行为有利于顾客参与价值创造吗?——来自在线定制行业的实证分析

企业支持行为对顾客参与价值共创作用的研究主要聚焦于企业支持行为对顾客参与共创水平的影响,而对顾客参与和服务结果之间关系的作用分析较少,也忽视了在线共创情景中顾客对服务结果贡献归因的差异。本研究以归因理论为基础,探讨在线价值共创过程中企业支持行为的作用,通过322份在线定制行业的顾客问卷分析,得出结论:在线共创情景中,顾客参与通过增强体验价值来提高服务满意度;感知企业支持在顾客参与和体验价值之间有显著负向调节作用;顾客对自身参与表现的满意程度和感知企业支持在顾客参与和体验价值之间有显著的联合调节效应,即顾客对自身参与表现的满意程度弱化了感知企业支持的调节效应。