Algorithmic Personalization Does Not Earn the Renewal: Value, Satisfaction, and Continuance Intention in Albanian Subscription Video-on-Demand

Algorithmic personalization is the flagship mechanism of interactive marketing: platforms learn from user behavior and respond with individually curated value propositions, and industry practice treats the quality of that loop as a lever for customer retention. Whether personalization actually converts into consumer commitment—operationalized here as continuance intention—has been tested almost exclusively in affluent, algorithm-saturated markets. This study tests the conversion where the assumption should be most fragile: subscription video-on-demand in Albania, a price-sensitive transitional European market. Drawing on an extended value-based expectation-confirmation model within a stimulus–organism–response structure, algorithmic personalization, perceived value, and cross-device compatibility are modeled as antecedents of customer satisfaction and continuance intention—the attitudinal antecedent of subscription renewal—among 284 Albanian subscribers, using partial least squares structural equation modeling with 5000 bias-corrected bootstrap resamples. Personalization did not predict continuance intention directly (β = −0.060, ns), and its total effect was effectively zero (−0.004): the significant but weak indirect pathway through satisfaction was offset by the small negative direct path. Perceived value dominated—associated with continuance intention directly (β = 0.337) and through satisfaction (total effect = 0.609)—and emerged in an importance–performance map analysis as the highest-importance, lowest-performing construct. Robustness analyses show the null is not a measurement artifact and sharpens among personal payers; within the sample, it decomposes into a modestly positive personalization effect among lower-income subscribers and a negative effect among higher-income respondents (difference p = 0.003), contradicting a simple income-constraint account and leaving the moderating mechanism open. The findings provide evidence for the market contingency of personalization’s retention promise: in this market, the algorithm does not earn the renewal; the value proposition does.