The effect of email personalisation on generation X

Abstract

It is very difficult nowadays for companies to retain and acquire new customers. This means that companies have to increase their competitiveness in order to increase the numbers of sales and the revenue generated. Companies make use of personalisation in order to have a more effective and competitive marketing strategy. Personalisation is a process which involves collecting customer data in order for the firms to be able to make products or deliver services which are very close to the preference of the consumers. Moreover, different personalisation channels could be used by the firms which include recommendation agents, online advertisements and email messages. The effect of personalisation on the customers depends on several risk factors. These include the type of data collection method, the age of the customers and the trust of the customers in the retailer.

The purpose of this study is to find the effect of email personalisation on customers that belong to Generation X taking into consideration two different factors that are trust and data collection methods. This research objective is achieved by answering the following research question:

Does the type of company data collection (overt/covert) have an effect on the privacy concerns of the customers which belong to Generation X given that the trust in the retailer is high?

An experiment was conducted which involved two different scenarios: overt and covert data collection methods. A total of 128 participants took part in this research study in which 64 participants were presented with the overt data collection scenario while the remaining 64 participants were presented with the covert data collection scenario.

From this research study, it was found that the type of data collection used by the companies does have an effect on the privacy concerns of the customers which belong to Generation X, keeping the trust in the retailer constant. As a result, it is vital that customers are informed that their personal information is being collected and regarding the use of the collected information. This leads to an increase in the satisfaction of the customers and therefore an increase in the revenue generated by the firm.