E-PERSONALIZATION AND ONLINE PRIVACY FEATURES: THE CASE WITH TRAVEL WEBSITES

E-personalization is the process of tailoring preferences to individual traveler’s characteristics or performance on travel websites. E-personalization is used to enhance customer service or e-commerce sales. However, personalization also causes privacy concerns. Today’s technology provides multiple opportunities for extensive data gathering and invasion of privacy. Privacy issue has recently received enormous research attention. This is mainly because of the advent of the web, and the trend of personalization. However, very limited research has been conducted to assess consumers’ perspectives with regard to e-personalization and privacy from the travelers’ perspective. The purpose of this study was to investigate consumers’ perceptions and attitudes towards e-personalization and privacy features on travel websites. Previous research has consistently utilized either e-personalization or privacy concern as marketing tools. Our results show a moderate and direct effect of e-personalization and privacy on consumer’s attitudes toward a company Website, which in turn has a strong effect on purchase intention, and also the importance of the privacy concern compared to personalization.

[1]  J. Phelps,et al.  Privacy Concerns and Consumer Willingness to Provide Personal Information , 2000 .

[2]  Godwin J. Udo,et al.  Privacy and security concerns as major barriers for e-commerce: a survey study , 2001, Inf. Manag. Comput. Secur..

[3]  Brian Sternthal,et al.  Experimental design: Generalization and Theoretical Explanation , 1993 .

[4]  Andrew J. Frew,et al.  Evaluating Electronic Channels of Distribution in the Hotel Sector: A Delphi Study , 2000, J. Inf. Technol. Tour..

[5]  Panagiotis Germanakos,et al.  Capturing essential intrinsic user behaviour values for the design of comprehensive web-based personalized environments , 2008, Comput. Hum. Behav..

[6]  Rob Law,et al.  A Study of Airlines’ Online Reservation Services on the Internet , 2000 .

[7]  Don Peppers,et al.  The One to One Future: Building Relationships One Customer at a Time (Будущее персонализации: построение взаимоотношений с одним клиентом) , 1993 .

[8]  C. Goodwin.  Privacy: Recognition of a Consumer Right , 1991 .

[9]  C. Conde.  A new breed. , 2007, Texas medicine.

[10]  Stephen Taylor,et al.  Marketing Small Hotels on the World Wide Web , 1999, J. Inf. Technol. Tour..

[11]  Lynn M. Martin.  E‐innovation: Internet impacts on small UK hospitality firms , 2004 .

[12]  Analía Amandi,et al.  User - interface agent interaction: personalization issues , 2004, Int. J. Hum. Comput. Stud..

[13]  T. Graeff,et al.  Collecting and using personal data: consumers’ awareness and concerns , 2002 .

[14]  A. Tjoa,et al.  Information and Communication Technologies in Tourism , 1996, Springer Vienna.

[15]  B. Joseph Pine,et al.  The Experience Economy , 1999 .

[16]  Lawrence M. Wein,et al.  Economics of Product Development by Users: the Impact of Sticky Local Information , 1998 .

[17]  Monica Bonett.  Personalization of Web Services: Opportunities and Challenges , 2001 .

[18]  Ellen R. Foxman,et al.  Information Technology, Marketing Practice, and Consumer Privacy: Ethical Issues , 1993 .

[19]  Doug Riecken,et al.  Introduction: personalized views of personalization , 2000, CACM.

[20]  Paul Weeks,et al.  Sites for Sore Eyes: An Analysis of Australian Tourism and Hospitality Web Sites , 1999, J. Inf. Technol. Tour..

[21]  Douglas B. Terry,et al.  Using collaborative filtering to weave an information tapestry , 1992, CACM.

[22]  Jaideep Srivastava,et al.  Automatic personalization based on Web usage mining , 2000, CACM.

[23]  Marianna Sigala,et al.  Major trends and IT issues facing the hospitality industry in the new economy: a review of the 5th Annual Pan-European Hospitality Technology Exhibition and Conference (EURHOTEC 2000). , 2001 .

[24]  G. Chester.  The New Breed , 1986 .

[25]  Eve M. Caudill,et al.  Consumer Online Privacy: Legal and Ethical Issues , 2000 .

[26]  A. Walle,et al.  Tourism and the Internet , 1996 .

[27]  Rob Law,et al.  Extending the modified heuristic usability evaluation technique to chain and independent hotel websites , 2004 .

[28]  D. Fesenmaier,et al.  Information and Communication Technologies in Tourism 2000 , 2000 .

[29]  Carl F. Mela,et al.  Customer Channel Migration , 2008 .

[30]  Banwari Mittal,et al.  The role of personalization in service encounters , 1996 .