Is Personalization Too Fragile to Work? How Priming and Need for Uniqueness Influence the Effectiveness of Personalized Communication

• In Event: Persuasion, Compliance, and Attitude Change

Abstract

Personalized communication is becoming an industry trend due to rapid development of Internet technologies. A personalized message is believed to be more efficacious than a non-personalized message because it creates a match between the message and the message receipt. The current study challenges this widely-accepted notion by arguing that personalization may not always outperform non-personalization since the effectiveness of a personalized message can be affected by both external factors (e.g., the context where the message is placed) and internal factors (e.g., the message recipient’s personality). Through a 2 (message type: personalized vs. non-personalized) × 2 (prime type: positive vs. negative) × 2 (need for uniqueness: high vs. low) between-subjects experiment with 223 adults, it is illustrated that a personalized message is more effective than a non-personalized one only when the immediate message context suggests so (when the prime is positive), and such a phenomenon is especially characteristic of individuals with a lower need for uniqueness. Theoretical and practical implications based on these findings are discussed.

Authors

• Cong Li, University of Miami

• Zongchao Li, U of Miami