Saji K Mathew

We study the relationship between web personalization and individual information privacy on the customer's online buying behavior. Following a laboratory experiment we tested the differences for number of clicks and number of products added to cart with respect to two factors, namely Web Personalization and Information privacy related to a product. Our results show significant mean differences with respect to clicks and number of products added to the cart for privacy and non privacy products.

Purpose: Web personalization has been studied in different streams of research such as Marketing, Human Computer Interaction and Computer Science. However, an information systems perspective of web personalization research is very scarcely visible in this body of knowledge. This research review seeks to address two important questions: how has web personalization evolved as an integrative discipline? How has web personalization been treated in IS literature and where should researchers focus next? Design/methodology/approach: The paper intently follows an information systems perspective in its thematic classification of web personalization research which is consistent with the early conceptualization of information systems by logically mapping IS categories into web personalization research streams. Articles from 100+ journals were analyzed and important concepts related to web personalization were classified from an information systems perspective. Findings: Surrounding the theme of web personalization two parallel streams of research evolved. First stream consisted of internet business models, computer science algorithms and web mining. Second stream focussed on human computer Interaction studies, user modelling and targeted marketing. Future information systems researchers in web personalization must focus on four important areas of social media, web development methodologies, emerging Internet accessing gadgets and domains other than e-Commerce. Originality/value: Web personalization has been studied previously in separate research streams. But no integrated view from different research streams exists. Although research interest in web mining has been growing as evidenced by growing number of publications an information systems perspective of web personalization research is very scarcely visible in the body of knowledge. The authors intently follow an information systems perspective in their thematic classification of web personalization research which is consistent with the early conceptualization of information systems by logically mapping IS categories into web personalization research streams. This thematic segregation of different research streams into IS framework makes our study distinct from other early reviews. They also identify four important areas where future IS researchers should focus on. © Emerald Group Publishing Limited.

E-Commerce firms have adopted Web Personalization techniques extensively in the form of recommender systems for influencing user behavior for customer retention. Although there are numerous studies in this area, academic research addressing the role of Web Personalization in user acceptance of technology is very scant. Further, owing to the potential of recommender systems to attract and retain customers, most studies in web personalization have been done in E-Commerce setting. In this research, the ‘Consumer Acceptance and Use of Information Technology’ theory proposed in previous research has been extended to include web personalization as a moderator and has been tested in an E-Government context. Data collection involved conducting a laboratory experiment with the treatment group receiving personalized web forms for requesting an E-Government service. Our analyses show that personalizing the Web by self-reference and content relevance has a significant moderator role in influencing the relationship between determinants of intention to use and behavioral intention in certain cases.

Consumer acceptance of technology is vital for understanding the motivating factors involved in technology acceptance and adoption. Whereas most academic attention has gone to understanding user acceptance of technology in organizations, some recent studies have extended this research to consumer context. With the evolution of Internet commerce and its wide adoption resulted in academic research focus on recommendation systems and web personalization. This study seeks to understand how web personalization influences consumer technology acceptance in an E-Government setting. A recent theory of consumer acceptance was extended to study the impact of Web Personalization as a moderator. Our results show that personalizing the web by self-reference and content relevance has a significant moderator role in influencing the relationship between determinants of intention to use on user acceptance in certain cases.

This study integrates theories of task complexity and cognitive stopping rule to understand how complexity of information environment impacts uncertainty, effectiveness and efficiency of consumers’ decision process. Using the reviews provided by an online retailer, we develop an e-commerce environment with three levels of complexity: high with raw textual reviews, medium with attribute-level review summaries and low with web personalization strategy based on attribute preferences extracted from online reviews. In a controlled lab experiment, users took buying decisions under different levels of complexity. Our analyses of clickstream data showed that users’ effectiveness and efficiency were the highest in review based personalized environment. However, between groups who received summarized and textual reviews, the latter demonstrated apparently higher effectiveness and efficiency in decision making, which went against our anticipation. Further investigation showed that users simplified decision process when exposed to raw reviews. These results further inform reviews-based personalization strategy in e-commerce.

Consumer acceptance of technology is vital for understanding the motivating factors involved in technology acceptance and adoption. Whereas most academic attention has gone to understanding user acceptance of technology in organizations, some recent studies have extended this research to consumer context. The evolution of Internet commerce and its wide adoption resulted in academic research on recommendation systems and web personalization. This study seeks to understand how web personalization influences consumer technology acceptance in an E-Government setting. A recent theory of consumer acceptance was extended to study the impact of Web Personalization as a moderator. Our results show that personalizing the web by self-reference and content relevance has a significant moderating effect on the relationship between the determinants of intention to use and user acceptance in certain cases. © (2013) by the AIS/ICIS Administrative Office All rights reserved.