Professor Sunil Wattal measures the business value of personalization in a forthcoming article on firms’ use of different types of information for email advertising. When firms use product-based personalization, consumers respond positively. On the other hand, consumers respond negatively when firms are explicit in their use of personally identifiable information (e.g., a personalized greeting). The negative response to personalized greetings is more intense for consumers who are not familiar with the firm.
The study shows the the benefits of personalized e-mails and also highlights consumers’ concerns over the use of information in personalization. The research is based on a unique data set of over 10 million e-mail advertisements sent by a website to over 600,000 customers.
The article titled ‘What’s in a “Name”? Impact of Use of Customer Information in E-Mail Advertisements’ has been accepted for publication in Information Systems Research.
