Tailored vs. invasive advertising: an empirical examination of antecedents and outcomes of consumers’ attitudes toward personalized advertising

Personalized advertising represents an emerging trend in online advertising. Using
enhanced data collection techniques, marketers can craft seemingly made to order
advertisements tailored to specific individuals. In turn, this should lead to advertisements
that are more relevant for consumers and more effective for marketers. Therefore,
personalized advertising has the potential to benefit both consumers and firms alike.
However, consumer acceptance of the technique remains a huge hurdle, as many
consumers seem uncomfortable with the practice due in part to privacy concerns over the
vast amounts of data collected and analyzed when generating personalized
advertisements. Therefore, it is critical to garner a better understanding of consumers’
attitudes towards personalized advertising in order to be able to use those insights to
alleviate consumer privacy concerns. The purpose of this research is to work towards developing a more thorough understanding of consumers’ attitudes towards personalized advertising by exploring the antecedents and outcomes of those attitudes. In particular, we examine what factors
determine whether personalized advertising is perceived favorably vs. invasively by
consumers and what effects those perceptions have on consumers’ attitudes and
intentions. The research lends contributions to academicians, marketing practitioners, and
consumers by helping to achieve an increased understanding of personalized
advertising’s impact on consumers’ perceptions. The empirical study employed in this research utilizes a conceptual framework that integrates privacy calculus theory with previous research on invasiveness, advertising acceptance, and innovation adoption. In addition, this research contributes to the marketing and information privacy literatures by making a theoretical connection between perceived invasiveness and its relationship with privacy concerns, as well as its impact on consumers’ attitudes and behavioral intentions. The results from the empirical
research reveal that a number of constructs, such as perceived invasiveness, privacy
concerns, perceived usefulness, and consumer innovativeness demonstrate significant
relationships with consumers attitudes and behavioral intentions in the context of
personalized advertising. Implications for managers, researchers, and consumers are
discussed.