Study. A wide EU-study shows that 92% of the airline ticket websites, 76% of hotel room websites, and 41% of websites selling sports shoes personalise offers, when a consumer enters the site. The price differentiation, though, seems to be very seldom. But consumers in general, would be more positive about personalisation if they received more information about it.
Some global portals like Amazon.com and Hotels.com are know to personalise both content and prices according to how much they know about the consumer. An EU study – with an online survey in 28 countries, mystery shopping on 160 e-commerce websties and 8 EU member states – show that European e-shops is not a big user of that practise, which the EU commission has been investigating before and called illegal.
While European websites base the content, they show to the consumer, on the consumer’s past online behaviour (history of visits and click), prince differences web small, the median difference being less than 1.6% according to the EU study.
Survey respondents were most concerned about their personal data being used for purposes other than the ones for which it was gathered and a relative majority of EU28 online consumers saw both benefits and disadvantages of online targeted advertising and personalised ranking (51% and 49% respectively), while 36% of respondents said the same for personalised pricing.
The study concludeds that consumers would be more positive about personalisation if they received more information and had more control over these practices. Six in ten EU28 online respondents said they would be more positive if there was an easy option to refuse.
