Abstract

Advances in technology have spurred the widespread use of personalization in marketing, with personalized promotions often deemed to deliver superior value to customers. However, name personalization, in which recipients’ names appear in marketing messages, can lead to contradictory consequences. This study explores the negative effects of name personalization and proposes combining it with sender and content personalization as a solution. Empirically, it conducts two field experiments and two lab experiments to test the hypotheses. The results demonstrate that sender personalization mitigates the negative impact of name personalization, particularly for new customers. Moreover, content personalization can effectively counteract the negative effects of name personalization for repeat customers. These findings provide insights for crafting personalized promotional messages tailored to different customer stages.

About the Speaker

Prof. Maggie Dong is currently Head of School and Professor at School of Marketing, UNSW. Maggie's research interests range from business-to-business marketing to the marketing-operations interface with a strong focus on a range of supply chain topics (including the supply chain resilience and digital transformation of supply chains). She uses multiple methods including field experiment and data, survey, and lab experiment in her research for empirical rigor and managerial relevance.

Maggie has published extensively in premier journals in the fields of marketing, operations management, and information systems, including Journal of Marketing Research, Journal of the Academy of Marketing Science, Information Systems Research, Production and Operations Management, Journal of Operations Management, International Journal of Research in Marketing to name a few. She has held a range of relevant government research grants in Hong Kong and the Mainland China. Maggie has served as Guest Editor of the Journal of Business Research, Associate Editor of the Decision Sciences Journal, and an editorial board member of the Journal of Academy of Marketing Science. She also served as the National Representative for China of the European Marketing Academy (EMAC) and Non-local Member of Selection Panel of the Hong Kong PhD Fellowship Scheme and Postdoctoral Fellowship Scheme.