Personalized Marketing - A study examining factors influencing millennials’ intention to act upon personalized advertisements on Facebook

Abstract: Purpose: The fundamental aim of this thesis is to investigate how strongly the Personalized Marketing (PM) factors identified in previous literature correlate with millennials’, aged 24 to 40, intention to act upon personalized advertisements on Facebook. Thereafter, the goal was to compare the extent to which the outcomes varied depending on millennials' age group and gender. Methodology: The thesis uses a quantitative method, cross-sectional correlational study, to measure the strength of the correlation between five identified personalized marketing factors, namely positive attitude, hedonic motivation, trust, past experience and advertising attributes, and millennials’ intention to act upon personalized advertisements on Facebook. The data was collected through an online survey, using a non-probability sampling method. Findings: Our empirical study showed that there is a strong correlation between positive attitude, trust, hedonic motivation, past experience, advertising attributes, and millennials’ intention to act upon personalized advertisements on Facebook. There were some differences in the measured correlation across gender and age. The findings also indicate a multiple linear relationship between the PM factors and millennials’ intention to act. Research implications/limitations: Our research has taken a holistic view at all PM factors altogether, through the application of the Theory of Planned Behavior, in order to investigate the extent to which each PM factor influences millennials’ intention and subsequently, their behavior. Future research could, therefore, attempt to use a different theory, such as the consumer cultural theory, to establish the extent to which such a study could yield different outcomes. Other limitations include our sampling method, the target group, the chosen social media platform and an unspecified industry/product category. Keywords: Personalized Marketing, Personalized Advertisements, Millennials, Facebook, Positive Attitude, Hedonic Motivation, Trust, Past Experience, Advertising Attributes, Intention to Act