E-PERSONALIZATION AND ONLINE PRIVACY FEATURES: THE CASE WITH TRAVEL WEBSITES

E-personalization is the process of tailoring preferences to individual traveler’s characteristics or performance on travel websites. E-personalization is used to enhance customer service or e-commerce sales. However, personalization also causes privacy concerns. Today’s technology provides multiple opportunities for extensive data gathering and invasion of privacy. Privacy issue has recently received enormous research attention. This is mainly because of the advent of the web, and the trend of personalization. However, very limited research has been conducted to assess consumers ’ perspectives with regard to e-personalization and privacy from the travelers ’ perspective. The purpose of this study was to investigate consumers ’ perceptions and attitudes towards e-personalization and privacy features on travel websites. Previous research has consistently utilized either e-personalization or privacy concern as marketing tools. Our results show a moderate and direct effect of e-personalization and privacy on consumer’s attitudes toward a company Website, which in turn has a strong effect on purchase intention, and also the importance of the privacy concern compared to personalization