The personalization privacy paradox: An exploratory study of decision making process for location-aware marketing

Despite the vast opportunities offered by location-aware marketing (LAM), mobile customers' privacy concerns appear to be a major inhibiting factor in their acceptance of LAM. This study extends the privacy calculus model to explore the personalization-privacy paradox in LAM, with considerations of personal characteristics and two personalization approaches (covert and overt). Through an experimental study, we empirically validated the proposed model. Results suggest that the influences of personalization on the privacy risk/benefit beliefs vary upon the type of personalization systems (covert and overt), and that personal characteristics moderate the parameters and path structure of the privacy calculus model. (C) 2010 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.