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Abstract
Online personalisation offered through the Internet enables retailers to provide customers with contents and services that are tailored based on the customers’ personal information. In general, online personalisation improves the customers’ engagement and buying process, which in turn increases the retailers’ revenue. Paradoxically, although more online personalisation should benefit customers, due to privacy concerns, customers may be hesitant to use online personalisation services. The ‘personalisation-privacy paradox’ has often been studied with the utility maximisation theory. This thesis aims to enrich our understanding on online personalisation in two ways by, first, empirically verifying the assumptions made by the utility maximisation theory and, second, by adding a perspective of trust to the study of online personalisation. To do so, a two-(high vs. low online personalisation) by-two (high vs. low-value calculation) factorial design experiment of an online computer purchase scenario was presented to 232 Australian online consumers. The regression results from the experiment confirmed the following: (1) the value calculation, a core utility maximisation assumption, improves purchase outcomes; (2) the trust propensity moderates the effect of online personalisation on purchase outcomes; and (3) online personalisation improves the consumer’s trust perception towards a retailer. The results of this thesis support the utility maximisation theory and suggest that a retailer should undertake online personalisation as a business strategy to build a long-term relationship with customers.