Understanding effects of personalization in digital marketing

• Applicant: Professor Dr. Oliver Emrich
• Subject Area: Accounting and Finance
• Term: from 2019 to 2023
• Project identifier: Deutsche Forschungsgemeinschaft (DFG) - Project number 425047887

While previous research has mostly focused on personalization based on product preferences, the goal of this project is to investigate the consequences of personalization based on individual differences in mindsets (i.e., psychological constructs that describe individual processing styles, personality traits, and goal orientations) by 1) developing new experimental procedures to test the effect of mindset-based personalization in lab experiments and cross-validate findings using field experiments with real behavioral outcomes,2) understanding mechanisms that explain both acceptance by consumers and the impact for companies in terms of purchase outcomes,3) identifying moderating design parameters and situational boundary conditions for the effectiveness of personalization.The expected findings are highly relevant from a societal public policy perspective because a high uncertainty exists whether, how, and under which conditions the use of individual consumer data (e.g., from social networks) influences consumers’ attitudes, beliefs, and behaviors, presumably without consumers’ awareness of this influence (or “manipulation”). The insights can be used to inform public policy regulation about manipulations in domains related to voting decisions and detrimental behaviors (e.g., addictive behavior).

• DFG Programme: Research Grants
• International Connection: France, Singapore, Switzerland
• Cooperation Partners: Professor Tim Böttger, Ph.D.; Professor Dennis Herhausen, Ph.D.; Professor Leonard Lee, Ph.D.