Perceived Personalization, Privacy Concern, e-WOM and Consumers' Click Through Intention in Social Advertising

Social advertising, ads in social media platforms, have become popular in recent years because of the evolution of internet technologies such as web analytics and big data mining. The content of the social advertisement is tailored in order to personalize the message to the target consumer groups. In an effort to reach the prospects, marketers should focus on the social leads on social networking sites (SNS) to promote and to sell their brands/products. Drawing on, online personalized advertising literature, e-WOM recommendations and increasing privacy concerns and perceived ad personalization (conceptualized as functions of psychological reactance) on SNS leads to avoid such advertisements. The goal of the study is to investigate the impact of perceived personalization, privacy concern, and e-WOM to consumers' behavioral click through intentions towards social ads. This study contributed to the theory of psychological reactance by indicating that the individuals with less privacy concern and personalized recommendations from their contacts on SNS have a smaller amount of reactance towards social advertisements than commercial advertisements by marketers. Suggestions for advertisers, social media marketing practitioners conclude the paper.