Personalized marketing: Do consumers create their own advertisement? : A qualitative study of how consumers experience personalized marketing messages designed using their private mobile data.

Abstract: Background: Companies collect private data about consumers for marketingpurposes. Mobile devices provide marketers with valuable insights intoconsumers' hyper-context information concerning specific consumersituations such as location, time, and environment. Consumers, on the otherhand, may have a different attitude towards how marketers use their privatedata. Purpose: The purpose of this thesis is to analyse and gain insight into theemotional experience of consumers when receiving personalized marketingmessages that are designed using their private data collected from mobiledevices. Method: A qualitative study was implemented and primary data werecollected from semi-structured interviews. The conducted data were analysedto understand the underlying concepts of this thesis research question. Anabductive approach was used and involved back-and-forth engagement withthe empirical findings of the social world for theoretical ideas and with thesecondary sources of literature. Conclusion: Consumers’ can experience both positive and negative feelingssimultaneously. The authors conclude that it was not the personalizedmarketing messages themselves that created negative emotions amongconsumers, it was the knowledge and the feeling of knowing that theadvertisements were created from their 'private data. The positive emotionswere connected to the benefits of receiving advertisements that matched theirinterests.