"Just for you!" A study into the effectiveness and the mechanism of customized communication

Customized communication is prevalent in current practices of marketing and health communication. Customization is a strategy of adjusting communication to match some aspects of the receiver’s self by either incorporating personal cues in the message (personalization) or adapting the content to the recipient’s preferences, interests, or beliefs (tailoring). This way customized messages are believed to make the content relevant and appealing to the receiver and thus more persuasive. Previous studies were not consistent in proving customization effectiveness and lacked addressing the underlying mechanism. In response to these lacunae, this dissertation investigates the effectiveness of customized communication and the mechanism behind it in four different studies. Overall, the results show that customization may be successful, but only when perceived as personal. Moreover, the studies uncover some moderators of customization effectiveness, namely, need for uniqueness, privacy concerns, trust, and country characteristics.