Network Recommended Customization In The Context Of Consumer Decision-making

The focus of marketing activities is shifting increasingly from market segments to individual consumers, seeking to customize or personalize offerings, marketing interventions, or pricing to individual preferences. Whereas customization allows consumers to configure a final product by changing product attributes to match their preferences, personalization provides consumers with one or more recommended products currently available in the marketplace that match their measured or stored preferences most closely.While both customers and companies may benefit from tailoring product offers to distinctly unique preferences, the premise of treating each customer differently is based on the assumption that individuals rely on their own preferences when making choices and reward those companies that provide them with product offers that match their tastes most closely.The purpose of this study is to investigate the effects of online recommendation on consumer decision with a between-subjects factorial design. Particularly, this study examines how recommendation type (personalized recommendations vs. targeted recommendations), product category (search vs. experience) and consumer culture (individualism vs. collectivism) differences moderate the effects. The result shows that the effects on the recommendation quality were influenced by interaction between recommendation type and product category as well as the interaction between recommendation type and consumer culture. Then this thesis proposes the revelations both on academic and practice.