When Are Personalized Recommendations More Effective for Online Shoppers? The Effects of the Recommendation Source and Product Type

When Are Personalized Recommendations More Effective for Online Shoppers? The Effects of the Recommendation Source and Product Type

To cater to the growing usage of e-commerce, understanding how consumers respond to the core features of websites is needed. Personalized recommendation is a crucial element of online shopping that differentiates online shopping from offline experience. Two experiments examined the effects of interplay between how the recommendations are made and the type of product consumers shop for. Study 1 revealed that when the source of recommendations is explained, the recommendations are perceived as more credible. Study 2 showed that the effect of personalized recommendations is not uniform; participants have a more positive website attitude for identity-signaling than non-identity-signaling products. However, the different sources of recommendations did not have a direct effect on website attitude.