The Mediating Role of Adaptive Personalization in Online Shopping

In the context of e-commerce, personalization system provides customers with recommendations on what products to buy. Grounded on social exchange theory, this study empirically examines and theoretically articulates the effects of willingness to share information and adaptive personalization on willingness to repurchase products. A survey was conducted and PLS was used demonstrating that adaptive personalization fully mediates the relationship between willingness to share information and willingness to repurchase products. The results suggest that online customers might take risks to provide their information to online retailers in exchange of offerings, and that continuous capturing of customer’s preferences throughout their interaction time with the system can lead to better recommendations from the system, thus providing more incentives for them to repurchase products.