Study: Personalization for personalization's sake a turn-off

Wowing consumers with your personalization abilities may not be the way to woo them after all. A recent study by a U.S. marketing professor has found that packing too much personalization into consumer communications could be giving them the creeps.

by Helen Leggatt

Just because your customer has provided the name of their cat, the color of their car and the middle initials of their cousin’s first boyfriend’s grandmother, it doesn’t mean you have to use it. Personalization for personalization sake just isn’t cool – in fact it’s creepy according to Tiffany Barnett White, marketing professor at the University of Illinois.

"People bristle at personalization just for the sake of personalization," said White. "It comes across as too pushy. They want personalization that is relevant to them."

The findings (.pdf) appear to echo societal behavior whereby pushy salesmen are shunned when they overstep the familiarity mark.

Co-written by marketing professors Sharon Shavitt of the University of Illinois, Helge Thorbjorsen of the Norwegian School of Economics and Business Administration and Debra Zahay of Northern Illinois University, the report advises marketers to use data with the consumer’s perspective in mind and not to overdo the use of technology. It’s not a case of abandoning personalization altogether, they say, but learning to use it to add value to the communication.

"Nowadays, consumers are so much more savvy," added White. "They're so bombarded with tricks of this nature that they start to seem like tricks. So the onus is on marketers to convince consumers that this isn't a trick, that it has some value."