The Psychological Appeal of Personalized Content in Web Portals: Does Customization Affect Attitudes and Behavior?

Internet technology has made possible the widespread dissemination of individualized media messages, but we know very little about their psychological import. A between-subjects experiment ( N =60) with three levels of customization (low, medium, high) was designed to examine whether greater levels of personalized content engender more positive attitudes. The results not only confirm this hypothesis but also reveal the mediating role played by users’ perceptions of relevance, involvement, interactivity, and novelty of portal content. In addition, customization has behavioral effects in that it affects users’ browsing activity.