Personalized Marketing at the Right Time: Toward Motivation-Based Temporal Dynamics in Web Personalization

Abstract

Web personalization is an essential tool for marketers to market personalized offerings. To be accurate and valuable to the user and subsequently the focal firm, web personalization must be situation-aware and timely. However, current web personalization approaches are ill-adapted to react to the shifting nature of user preferences, which results in the degradation of personalization’s effectiveness. This dissertation suggests that applying a motivation-based approach may mitigate this dilemma. More specifically, this dissertation contributes to the literature by providing theoretical insights on and empirical validation of advances to increase the understanding of motivation in the context of web personalization. Thus, it builds the case for motivation-based temporal dynamics in web personalization by identifying advanced contextualization (based on refined psychological models) and timing as central research focus points through a systematic literature review (Article 1). Next, this research provides a conceptual framework (based on the Fundamental Motives Framework) for motivation-based temporal dynamics in web personalization (Article 2). Finally, via experimental settings, the remaining article empirically investigates the applicability of the chosen fundamental motives in predicting business-relevant metrics in online channels. The results suggest that a motivation-based approach to temporal dynamics may be a novel and beneficial complementary approach to traditional web personalization approaches. Concurrently, this dissertation finds that (chronic) fundamental motives can be successfully applied to predict business-relevant metrics in online channels. The results of the dissertation are primarily limited by the preliminary nature of the empirical testing and the lack of field testing. Future research opportunities exist in terms of further testing and validating the proposed motivation-based approach as well as comparing the effectiveness of other psychological constructs in similar applications.