Itamar Simonson: Why Do Consumers Ignore Personalized Offers? | Public Relations & Social Marketing Insight | Scoop.it

Consumers love a deal, and even more so if it’s customized just for them, right? Not so fast, says Itamar Simonson, a marketing professor at Stanford Graduate School of Business. Simonson has found that rather than being enticed by them, consumers are skeptical of those personalized offers that flood their inboxes.


His research, “Beating the Market: The Allure of Unintended Value,” was published in December 2013 in theJournal of Marketing Research.


Marketers have long assumed that touting a promotion as “customized,” “based on your past purchases” or “especially for you” will persuade customers that the product will fit better, fulfill more needs or otherwise prove more satisfying than others. But “telling consumers that an offer is tailored for them can backfire” and lower the chance that they’ll bite, writes Simonson, who co-authored the study with Aner Sela of the University of Florida and Ran Kivetz of Columbia Business School....