'Written Just For Me?' the Persuasiveness of Personalized Communication and the Role of Consumer-Related Factors.

Personalized communication is believed to influence consumers. This study examined the persuasiveness of personalized e-mail newsletters in terms of increased attention, processing, attitude, intention, and behavior by means of an experiment (N = 194). Participants randomly received either a newsletter containing one of three personalization strategies (identification, raising expectation of personalization, and contextualization) or a nonpersonalized one. Consumer-related factors were also considered. Personalization was not found to be superior. Different personalization strategies were effective for different stages of the persuasion process, and the effects were moderated by consumers’ need for uniqueness, trust, and privacy concerns. Personalization needs to be reconsidered.

Citation:

Ewa Maslowska, Edith Smit , and Bas van den Putte (2011) ,"'Written Just For Me?' the Persuasiveness of Personalized Communication and the Role of Consumer-Related Factors. ", in E - European Advances in Consumer Research Volume 9, eds. Alan Bradshaw, Chris Hackley, and Pauline Maclaran, Duluth, MN : Association for Consumer Research, Pages: 612.