Addressing The Personalization Privacy 
RESEARCH ARTICLE
ADDRESSING THE PERSONALIZATION–PRIVACY PARADOX:
AN EMPIRICAL ASSESSMENT FROM A FIELD
EXPERIMENT ON SMARTPHONE USERS1
Juliana Sutanto
Department of Management, Technology, and Economics, ETH Zürich, Weinbergstrasse 56/58,
Zürich, SWITZERLAND {jsutanto@ethz.ch}
Elia Palme
Newscron Ltd., Via Maderno 24, Lugano, SWITZERLAND {elia.palme@newscron.com}
Chuan-Hoo Tan
Department of Information Systems, City University of Hong Kong, Tat Chee Avenue,
Kowloon, HONG KONG {ch.tan@cityu.edu.hk}
Chee Wei Phang
Department of Information Management and Information Systems, Fudan University, 670 Guoshun Road,
Shanghai, CHINA {phangcw@fudan.edu.cn}
Privacy has been an enduring concern associated with commercial information technology (IT) applications, in particular regarding the issue of personalization. IT-enabled personalization, while potentially making the user computing experience more gratifying, often relies heavily on the user’s personal information to deliver individualized services, which raises the user’s privacy concerns. We term the tension between personalization and privacy, which follows from marketers exploiting consumers’ data to offer personalized product information, the personalization–privacy paradox. To better understand this paradox, we build on the theoretical lenses of uses and gratification theory and information boundary theory to conceptualize the extent to which privacy impacts the process and content gratifications derived from personalization, and how an IT solution can be designed to alleviate privacy concerns.
1
Set in the context of personalized advertising applications for smartphones, we propose and prototype an IT solution, referred to as a personalized, privacy-safe application, that retains users’ information locally on their smartphones while still providing them with personalized product messages. We validated this solution through a field experiment by benchmarking it against two more conventional applications: a base
ADDRESSING THE PERSONALIZATION–PRIVACY PARADOX:
AN EMPIRICAL ASSESSMENT FROM A FIELD
EXPERIMENT ON SMARTPHONE USERS1
Juliana Sutanto
Department of Management, Technology, and Economics, ETH Zürich, Weinbergstrasse 56/58,
Zürich, SWITZERLAND {jsutanto@ethz.ch}
Elia Palme
Newscron Ltd., Via Maderno 24, Lugano, SWITZERLAND {elia.palme@newscron.com}
Chuan-Hoo Tan
Department of Information Systems, City University of Hong Kong, Tat Chee Avenue,
Kowloon, HONG KONG {ch.tan@cityu.edu.hk}
Chee Wei Phang
Department of Information Management and Information Systems, Fudan University, 670 Guoshun Road,
Shanghai, CHINA {phangcw@fudan.edu.cn}
Privacy has been an enduring concern associated with commercial information technology (IT) applications, in particular regarding the issue of personalization. IT-enabled personalization, while potentially making the user computing experience more gratifying, often relies heavily on the user’s personal information to deliver individualized services, which raises the user’s privacy concerns. We term the tension between personalization and privacy, which follows from marketers exploiting consumers’ data to offer personalized product information, the personalization–privacy paradox. To better understand this paradox, we build on the theoretical lenses of uses and gratification theory and information boundary theory to conceptualize the extent to which privacy impacts the process and content gratifications derived from personalization, and how an IT solution can be designed to alleviate privacy concerns.
1
Set in the context of personalized advertising applications for smartphones, we propose and prototype an IT solution, referred to as a personalized, privacy-safe application, that retains users’ information locally on their smartphones while still providing them with personalized product messages. We validated this solution through a field experiment by benchmarking it against two more conventional applications: a base
References: Chellappa, R. K., and Sin, R. 2005. “Personalization Versus Privacy: An Empirical Examination of the Online Consumer’s Dilemma,” Information Technology and Management (6:2-3), pp Gefen, D. 2000. “E-Commerce: The Role of Familiarity and Trust,” Omega (28:5), pp. 725-737. Malhotra, N., Kim, S., and Agarwal, J. 2004. “Internet Users’ Information Privacy Concerns (IUIPC): The Construct, the Scale, and a Causal Model,” Information Systems Research (15:4), pp Taylor, S., and Todd, P. A. 1995. “Understanding Information Technology Usage: A Test of Competing Models,” Information Systems Research (6:2) , pp Xu, H., Dinev, T., Smith, H. J., and Hart, P. 2008. “Examining the Formation of Individual’s Privacy Concerns: Toward an Integrative View,” in Proceedings of the 29th International Conference on Information Systems, December 14-17, Paris, France, Paper 6.