Psychological Benefits of One-to-one Marketing in Apparel E-commerce: An Approach with Perceived Usefulness, Pleasure, Arousal, and Attitude toward the E-store

Wide-spread practitioner literature exists for the one-to-one marketing effect from a firm's perspective; however, limited research discusses the psychological effect of one-to-one marketing from a consumer's perspective. The authors test a model that integrates the level of consumer-perceived one-to-one marketing effort (OTO-E), instrumental (i.e., perceived usefulness) and affective benefits (Le., pleasure and arousal), and attitude toward the e-store (ATE). The analysis of an online survey (conducted with 195 U.S. undergraduates) confirms the positive effect of level of OTO-E on the benefits that influence ATE. In addition, it reveals the positive effect of the affective benefits on the instrumental benefit. The results expand the current research on the value of one-to-one marketing by presenting a consumer-oriented approach. As the study was conducted in the U.S. market with intense consumer demands for individuation of service, the results should provide useful managerial/ theoretical implications to Korean apparel e-tailers, concerning their future implementation of one-to-one marketing.