Treating customers as individuals in online retail

Goal: the purpose of the current paper is to examine how five consumer characteristics (namely, hedonic shopping orientation, comparison shopping proneness, consumer confusion proneness, privacy concerns, and awareness of privacy control) influence the need for different forms of customer experience (CX) individualization. Methodology: the study is based on an online survey of a representative sample of 586 Russian online consumers conducted in mid-2021. Several consumer groups with different preferences for CX individualization are identified using cluster analysis; then multinominal logit modelling is used to define whether five consumer characteristics can predict group membership. Findings: the results empirically confirm that consumers differ in the need for CX individualization and demonstrate that all five consumer characteristics do work in predicting the need for CX individualization, but their role varies for different CX individualization strategies. Originality and contributions: the paper is the first to jointly examine three CX individualization strategies that online retailers may use to interact with customers: content personalization, product customization, and interaction humanization. The results of the study shed light on CX individualization strategies that firms should use to addressthe diverse consumer needs in their long-term strategies.