Influence of personality traits on generation Z consumers' click-through intentions towards personalized advertisements: A mixed-methods study

Personalized social media advertisements (PSMAs) are developed by using consumers' personal information like names, demographic details, location, past buying history, and lifestyle interests to quickly grab consumers' attention within the cluttered space of digital advertisements. Generation Z consumers are highly connected to social media. Hence, this study attempts to understand how Generation Z consumers with different personality traits perceive personalized advertisements (PAs) on Facebook, and subsequently, how their perceived personalization influences their intention to click on PAs based on perceived usefulness and privacy concerns associated with those advertisements. The theoretical underpinning of this research is based on the self-congruency theory and privacy-calculus theory. An explanatory sequential mixedmethods design has been adopted, where a quantitative analysis (Study 1) is followed by a qualitative approach (Study 2). For Study 1, responses were collected from 324 Generation Z consumers through a structured questionnaire and the data was analyzed using the structural equation modeling technique to measure relationships among the constructs. Further, in Study 2, in-depth interviews were conducted with 15 Generation Z consumers, a purposively selected subset of informants from Study 1, to explore the potential causes of those relationships observed in Study 1. It has been found from the study that consumers' perception of PSMAs varies based on their personality traits. Consumers with dominant extraversion, conscientiousness, and neurotic personality traits perceive PSMAs positively whereas the openness to experience and agreeableness dominant consumers perceive those negatively. Positive perception of PSMAs among consumers increases the perceived usefulness of communications and subsequently improves the click-through intentions of the consumers. Generation Z Consumers' perception of PSMAs does not have any influence on their privacy concerns. Consumers' high privacy concerns reduce the click-through intention rate toward PSMAs. The study will help digital marketing managers to strategically deliver PSMAs, thereby enhancing the efficiency of their advertisements.