Evaluating the impact of personalized recommendations: Application in the mass-retailing sector.

Vandenbulcke, Virginie [UCL] Ducarroz, Caroline [UCL] Fouss, François [UCL]

This research aims at experimentally examining the impact of personalized recommendations – specific products recommended to a customer based on his purchase history – on the customer’s decision-making process, in the offline mass-retailing sector. In our experiment, participants received folder with either personalized recommendations or non-personalized recommendations. These recommendations are defined on what other shoppers, who act similarly in terms of shopping basket, buy. Results show that personalized recommendations have significant effects on customers’ perceptions on mass-retailer personality, on the flyer, on the recommendation system, and also on the intention to visit the store, on word-of-mouth and intention to purchase recommended products.