Understanding the Impact of Web Personalization on User Information Processing and Decision Outcomes

1. Understanding the Impact of Web Personalization on User Information Processing and Decision Outcomes By: Yousra Habib Dr. Dina Rateb Spring 2011

2. Web Personalization • Companies (Online Merchants) provide personalized offerings and unique experiences to customers(Users) • Brand promotion • Product Marketing • After-sales Support • On going hype of delivering personalized services over the web • Little Knowledge of important links to vital concepts and factors

3. Important Correlation

4. Factors involved in Web Personalization Attention Decisions of Web Users Cognitive Processes

5. Web Personalization Goal “ delivering the right content to the right person at the right time to maximize immediate and future business opportunities ”

6. Personalization Strategy to Achieving the goal • Immediate Opportunities • Control the content, presentation format and timing of personalized messages or offers to induce a favorable response to the merchant’s offerings • Future Opportunities • Increase Likelihood of accepting firm’s offerings in the future by implanting marketing messages in the user’s mind

7. Purpose of Article: Conceptualization of Web Personalization Highlights factors behind personalization strategies & their impact on different stages of information processing of a user.

9. Human Information Processing Model Permanent Memory

10. Study 1: Lab Experiment • Design • 3x2x2 design • Content Relevance(Relevant versus irrelevant) • Self Reference(presence versus absence of relevant content) • Goal specificity( Product Selection versus product- browsing versus random-browsing) • Procedure • 4 Phases • 1) a 12- minute study phase to navigate through an online shop • 2) a 5-minute distraction phase to clear the working memory • 3) a memory recall test • 4) Filling in a questionnaire

11. Phases of Study 1

12. Study 2: Field Study • Conduct of field study with a personalized music download site. • Online site set for a closed community of registered users. • Login before download required • Database containing a large collection of digitized songs.

13. Phases of Study 2: Field Study

14. The Research Model

15. Self Reference Attention # Click 0n Stimulus H1 H1:Users attend to self-referent web content to a larger extent than they attend to non-self-referent web content. H2a: Users recall self-referent web content faster and more accurately than they recall non-self-referent web content. Self Reference Result: measured by the number of clicks on the 2 different banners. # of clicks were 5.19 for self referent & 1.95 non self referent. Therefore supported Cognitive Processing Content Recall Information Exploration H2a Result: The response in time between the self referent and non-self referent was insignificant. Thus not supported. Self Reference

16. Self Reference Cont’d Final Choice H4a H3a: Users exposed to self-referent web content will seek less information and spend less time on decision making than when they are exposed to non-self referent web content. H4a: Users accept offers associated with self-referent web content to a larger extent than they accept offers associated with non-self-referent web content. Self Reference Result: Product Searching Subjects with self referent banners spent less effort in decision making. Supported hypothesis Cognitive Processing Decision Content Recall Information Exploration H3a Self Reference Result: Product Searching Subjects accepted self referent banners from the banner recommendations. Supported Hypothesis

17. Content Relevance H2b: Users recall web content relevant to their processing goal faster and more accurately than they recall irrelevant web content. H3b: Users exposed to relevant web content will seek less information and spend less time on decision making than when they are exposed to irrelevant web content. Result: Relevant Content could be recalled faster thus Supporting this Hypothesis. Cognitive Processing Cognitive Processing Content Recall Content Recall Information Exploration Information Exploration H2b H3b Content Relevance Content Relevance Result: Subjects exposed to congruent offers to personal preferences spent less effort in decision making

18. Content Relevance Cont’d Final Choice H4b H4b: Users accept offers associated with relevant web content to a larger extent than they accept offers associated with irrelevant web content. Content Relevance Decision Result: H4b was not supported as there wasn’t a significant difference in the songs chosen

19. Goal Specificity H2c: There is a larger difference in recall accuracy and response time between relevant and irrelevant web content for users with more-specific processing goals than for those with less-specific processing goals. H2c Cognitive Processing Content Recall Information Exploration Content Relevance Result: The difference in recall between relevant and irrelevant content for product selection group was larger than that of the product browsing group.

20. Evaluation Evaluation of Offers Evaluation of Offers H5a H5b H5a:Users evaluate self-referent web content more highly than they evaluate non-self-referent web content. H5b: Users evaluate relevant web content more highly than they evaluate irrelevant web content. Self Reference Content Relevance Result: The perceived usefulness of banner messages was evaluated higher in the self-referent group. Supported Hypothesis Evaluation Evaluation Result: Receiving recommendations from personalization agents made the subjects more satisfied rather than random offers. Supported Hypothesis

21. Limitations • The number of recall tests was 32. • Can cause Fatigue in subjects • Impair their recall performance • Randomizing their responses at the end of the test • Overestimate the Recall performance of Irrelevant Information • Both Banners although different content and purpose placed in the same location on a rotating basis • Both studies Intended to test proposed model but weren't exactly the same • Control experiment- make observations on memory recall • Study 2 was over a period of 6 weeks, a recall test was not feasible. • Different products were tested upon and of complete different categories

22. Conclusion • Persuasive Effectiveness of a self-referent message increased initially but decreased when such messages were overused resulting in a U-shaped Effect. • Findings apply to a wide range of web-based services that target attracting user’s attention & influencing their information processing. • Based on the Findings Personalization could offer competitive advantages to online merchants. • Personalized messages are perceived to be more useful and create willingness to explore personalized content further. • Reduces Information Overload and is an aid to Decision Making

23. Article Authors Kar Yan Tam Department of Information and Systems Management School of Business and Management Hong Kong University of Science and Technology, Clear Water Bay, HONG KONG kytam@ust.hk Shuk Ying Ho Department of Accounting and Business Information Systems Faculty of Economics and Commerce The University of Melbourne Victoria 3010 AUSTRALIA suho@unimelb.edu Citation: Kar Yan, Tam, and Ho Shuk Ying. "UNDERSTANDING THE IMPACT OF WEB PERSONALIZATION ON USER INFORMATION PROCESSING AND DECISION OUTCOMES." MIS Quarterly 30.4 (2006): 865-890. Computers & Applied Sciences Complete. EBSCO. Web. 22 Mar. 2011.

24. Any Questions?