Abstract
Personalized information has become ubiquitous on the Internet. However, the conclusion on whether such information is always more effective than standardized information looks somewhat confusing in the literature. Some prior studies showed that a personalized message could generate more favorable outcomes than a standardized one, but others did not (sometimes with an almost identical study design). To provide a possible explanation why there existed such conflicting findings and conclusions in the personalization literature, the current study tested the influence of involvement on personalization in an advertising context. Through an experiment, it was found that the superiority of a personalized message over a standardized message was more salient when the message recipient was highly involved with the focal subject of the message than lowly involved.
•How involvement might affect the personalization effect was tested in this study.•The effectiveness of personalization was examined in an online shopping context.•Personalized messages generated more favorable effects when involvement was high.•A simple personalization cue might not be sufficient to generate favorable effects.
