Enterprise Portal Personalization: Direct and Indirect End-User Effects, and the Moderating Effects of Gender

Enterprise portals offer rich functionality for end-user personalization, but few studies have been conducted on the end-user effects of this feature. This article presents a study of end-user effects of personalization, using the combined technology acceptance model (TAM) and the theory of planned behaviour (TPB) as a research framework. We propose that personalization indirectly affects end-users' intentions through effects on ease of use, usefulness, attitude and behaviour control. In addition, it may have a direct effect on end-users' intentions to use enterprise portals that is not mediated by the variables of the combined TAM/TPB-model. Because previous studies have found gender differences in the use of personalization, we also propose that the effects of personalization are moderated by gender. To test these propositions, a study of the effects of enterprise portal personalization in a large Norwegian government-owned enterprise is reported. Results from applying structural equation modelling show that personalization has a significant effect on perceived usefulness, perceived ease of use, attitude, and perceived behavioural control, but no direct effect on end-users' intentions to use the enterprise portal. Furthermore, the results show that the effects of personalization are moderated by gender. The results have implications for enterprise portal designers, for IS-managers and for further research on personalization of information systems in general.

[1]  G. Zinkhan,et al.  Determinants of Perceived Web Site Interactivity , 2008 .

[2]  Ludwig Christian Schaupp,et al.  E-voting: from apathy to adoption , 2005, J. Enterp. Inf. Manag..

[3]  Peter A. Todd,et al.  Understanding Information Technology Usage: A Test of Competing Models , 1995, Inf. Syst. Res..

[4]  Enrique Frías-Martínez,et al.  Automatic cognitive style identification of digital library users for personalization , 2007, J. Assoc. Inf. Sci. Technol..

[5]  Izak Benbasat,et al.  The Effects of Personalizaion and Familiarity on Trust and Adoption of Recommendation Agents , 2006, MIS Q..

[6]  Peter A. Todd,et al.  Assessing IT usage: the role of prior experience , 1995 .

[7]  Shuk Ying Ho,et al.  Web Personalization as a Persuasion Strategy: An Elaboration Likelihood Model Perspective , 2005, Inf. Syst. Res..

[8]  Jan Blom,et al.  Personalization: a taxonomy , 2000, CHI Extended Abstracts.

[9]  Timothy H. Greer,et al.  Web Personalization: The Impact of Perceived Innovation Characteristics on the Intention to Use Personalization , 2003, J. Comput. Inf. Syst..

[10]  Romin W. Tafarodi,et al.  Putting Oneself in the Task: Choice, Personalization, and Confidence , 2002 .

[11]  ThaeMin Lee,et al.  THE IMPACT OF PERCEPTIONS OF INTERACTIVITY ON CUSTOMER TRUST AND TRANSACTION INTENTIONS IN MOBILE COMMERCE , 2005 .

[12]  Fred D. Davis.  Perceived Usefulness, Perceived Ease of Use, and User Acceptance of Information Technology , 1989, MIS Q..

[13]  Izak Benbasat,et al.  Quo vadis TAM? , 2007, J. Assoc. Inf. Syst..

[14]  M. Gilly,et al.  eTailQ: dimensionalizing, measuring and predicting etail quality , 2003 .

[15]  Christy M. K. Cheung,et al.  Using the Internet as a learning medium: an exploration of gender difference in the adoption of FaBWeb , 2002, Proceedings of the 35th Annual Hawaii International Conference on System Sciences.

[16]  Sheng Wu,et al.  Exploring the impact of online service quality on portal site usage , 2002, Proceedings of the 35th Annual Hawaii International Conference on System Sciences.

[17]  Michael Alan Smith,et al.  Portals: toward an application framework for interoperability , 2004, CACM.

[18]  I. Ajzen.  Attitudes, Personality and Behavior , 1988 .

[19]  Rens Scheepers,et al.  A conceptual framework for the implementation of enterprise information portals in large organizations , 2006, Eur. J. Inf. Syst..

[20]  I. Ajzen,et al.  Belief, Attitude, Intention, and Behavior: An Introduction to Theory and Research , 1977 .

[21]  Izak Benbasat,et al.  Research Note: The Influence of Recommendations and Consumer Reviews on Evaluations of Websites , 2006, Inf. Syst. Res..

[22]  Gordon B. Davis,et al.  User Acceptance of Information Technology: Toward a Unified View , 2003, MIS Q..

[23]  Antti Oulasvirta,et al.  Motivations in personalisation behaviour , 2008, Interact. Comput..

[24]  Per E. Pedersen,et al.  Intentions to use mobile services: Antecedents and cross-service comparisons , 2005 .

[25]  Viswanath Venkatesh,et al.  Why Don't Men Ever Stop to Ask for Directions? Gender, Social Influence, and Their Role in Technology Acceptance and Usage Behavior , 2000, MIS Q..

[26]  Mary Ann Eastlick,et al.  An online prepurchase intentions model: The role of intention to search , 2001 .

[27]  Per E. Pedersen,et al.  The Application of Structural Equation Modelling in Information Systems Research , 2007, ECIS.

[28]  M. Wells.  Office clutter or meaningful personal displays : The role of office personalization in employee and organizational well-being , 2000 .

[29]  Mayuram S. Krishnan,et al.  The Personalization Privacy Paradox: An Empirical Evaluation of Information Transparency and the Willingness to be Profiled Online for Personalization , 2006, MIS Q..

[30]  Keng Siau,et al.  An Experimental Study on Ubiquitous commerce Adoption: Impact of Personalization and Privacy Concerns , 2008, J. Assoc. Inf. Syst..