Personalization Willingness Paradox: An Empirical Evaluation of Sharing Information and Prospective Benefit of Online Consumers

摘要

Online enterprises today use information about customers to improve service and design personalized offerings. To do this successfully, however, enterprises must collect consumer information. This study enhances awareness about a central paradox for firms investing in personalization; namely, that consumers who value information utility are also more likely to participate in personalization. We examine the relationship between prospective benefit and consumer willingness to share information for online personalization. Based on a survey of over 800 online consumers, we examine the question of whether customer perceived information valuable is associated with consumer willingness to be profiled online. Our results indicate that customers who desire greater profits will have a greater level of trust, and then more willing to be profiled. This result poses a dilemma for firms, is the bought information accurate and reliable? In order to manage this dilemma, we suggest that enterprises build trust for the core values and knowledge management systems that address the needs of consumers, and adopt a strategy of providing personalization features accepting that the privacy sensitive minority of consumers.