Evaluating the effectiveness of explanations for recommender systems : Methodological issues and empirical studies on the impact of personalization

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Platforms, the First Amendment and Online Speech: Regulating the Filters

In recent years, online platforms have given rise to multiple discussions about what their role is, what their role should be, and whether they should be regulated. The complex nature of these private entities makes it very challenging to place them in a single descriptive category with existing rules. In today’s information environment, social media platforms have become a platform press by providing hosting as well as navigation and delivery of public expression, much of which is done through machine learning algorithms. This article argues that there is a subset of algorithms that social media platforms use to filter public expression, which can be regulated without constitutional objections. A distinction is drawn between algorithms that curate speech for hosting purposes and those that curate for navigation purposes, and it is argued that content navigation algorithms, because of their function, deserve separate constitutional treatment. By analyzing the platforms’ functions independently from one another, this paper constructs a doctrinal and normative framework that can be used to navigate some of the complexity. The First Amendment makes it problematic to interfere with how platforms decide what to host because algorithms that implement content moderation policies perform functions analogous to an editorial role when deciding whether content should be censored or allowed on the platform. Content navigation algorithms, on the other hand, do not face the same doctrinal challenges; they operate outside of the public discourse as mere information conduits and are thus not subject to core First Amendment doctrine. Their function is to facilitate the flow of information to an audience, which in turn participates in public discourse; if they have any constitutional status, it is derived from the value they provide to their audience as a delivery mechanism of information. This article asserts that we should regulate content navigation algorithms to an extent. They undermine the notion of autonomous choice in the selection and consumption of content, and their role in today’s information environment is not aligned with a functioning marketplace of ideas and the prerequisites for citizens in a democratic society to perform their civic duties. The paper concludes that any regulation directed to content navigation algorithms should be subject to a lower standard of scrutiny, similar to the standard for commercial speech

Conceptualizing the consumer-brand relationship as a truly dyadic process

The consumer-brand relationship (CBR) has gained interest in recent years, but as currently conceptualized, it is limited to a parasocial relationship where the role of the brand is not acknowledged. In order to better understand the CBR, we have to ask several key questions: (1) What is the CBR? (2) What are consumer-brand interactions (CBIs)? And (3) How can we measure CBIs? The objective in Essay 1 is to develop a better understanding of the conceptual foundation of the CBR. This was accomplished through extensive review of relevant literature, which highlighted the need to consider the CBR as a truly dyadic process (rather than a parasocial relationship). At the end of Essay 1, a conceptual definition of the CBR is presented, and the importance of two types of interactions (transactional and social) is stressed. Essay 2 focuses more on the level of interaction in the CBR context—the consumer-brand interaction (CBI). Through a qualitative research design, several interaction themes in the CBR context were discovered, and the result was a comprehensive description of the CBI—including a definition and identification of five relevant CBI dimensions. The CBI and these dimensions were empirically examined in Essay 3. Through the development of a measurement scale for CBI and dimensions, a structural model representing the relationships between these constructs could be tested. In addition, moderating effects of interaction type (transactional and social) were considered. The essays provide a better understanding of the CBR by first focusing in on the individual interactions (CBIs) that actually create those relationships. And by considering the CBR as a truly dyadic process, the manager’s role is considered—thereby providing managerial and theoretical implications

Where are your Manners? Sharing Best Community Practices in the Web 2.0

The Web 2.0 fosters the creation of communities by offering users a wide array of social software tools. While the success of these tools is based on their ability to support different interaction patterns among users by imposing as few limitations as possible, the communities they support are not free of rules (just think about the posting rules in a community forum or the editing rules in a thematic wiki). In this paper we propose a framework for the sharing of best community practices in the form of a (potentially rule-based) annotation layer that can be integrated with existing Web 2.0 community tools (with specific focus on wikis). This solution is characterized by minimal intrusiveness and plays nicely within the open spirit of the Web 2.0 by providing users with behavioral hints rather than by enforcing the strict adherence to a set of rules.Comment: ACM symposium on Applied Computing, Honolulu : \'Etats-Unis d'Am\'erique (2009

The Role of the Mangement Sciences in Research on Personalization

We present a review of research studies that deal with personalization. We synthesize current knowledge about these areas, and identify issues that we envision will be of interest to researchers working in the management sciences. We take an interdisciplinary approach that spans the areas of economics, marketing, information technology, and operations. We present an overarching framework for personalization that allows us to identify key players in the personalization process, as well as, the key stages of personalization. The framework enables us to examine the strategic role of personalization in the interactions between a firm and other key players in the firm's value system. We review extant literature in the strategic behavior of firms, and discuss opportunities for analytical and empirical research in this regard. Next, we examine how a firm can learn a customer's preferences, which is one of the key components of the personalization process. We use a utility-based approach to formalize such preference functions, and to understand how these preference functions could be learnt based on a customer's interactions with a firm. We identify well-established techniques in management sciences that can be gainfully employed in future research on personalization.CRM, Persoanlization, Marketing, e-commerce,

Native advertising acceptance or avoidance : the effects of personalization and trust

The growth of native advertising seems to be increasing as rapidly as the concerns about it. Growing ethical concerns may hinder advertisers from employing native advertising freely regardless of its effectiveness. Likewise, despite the many industry studies and findings on native advertising, to date, limited academic research has explored the interplay between perceived ethical concerns and consumer response to native advertising. The purpose of this study was to investigate antecedents and consequences of native advertising avoidance and examine the effects of (1) perceived deceptiveness, (2) media trust, (3) brand trust, and (4) perceived personalization on perceived privacy concerns, ad skepticism, attitude toward the brand, ad avoidance, and purchase intention. Findings from the first study revealed significant three-way interaction effects among perceived deceptiveness, media trust, and brand trust on ad skepticism and attitude toward the brand. These findings are notable because consumers’ low perceived deceptiveness appears to be able to offset either low brand trust or low media trust. As such, identifying that native advertising is indeed advertising can enhance the effectiveness of the advertising message by lowering skepticism. Experiment 2 demonstrated significant two-way interaction effects between perceived personalization and media trust on privacy concerns, ad avoidance, and purchase intention. Specifically, consumers who had high trust in the social media in which the native ad appeared generated lower levels of perceived privacy concerns and lower levels of ad avoidance when they felt that the native advertising was highly personalized. In contrast, consumers who had low trust in the social media in which the native ad appeared reacted oppositely in that they had higher privacy concerns and higher ad avoidance when they perceived the ad as highly customized to their needs and interests. The findings contribute theoretically to our understanding of Psychological Reactance Theory and ad avoidance by demonstrating the moderating role of perceived personalization in responding to native advertising. Additionally, findings from this study provide managerial implications in that personalized advertising can offset weaknesses stemming from low media trust or low brand trust.Advertisin

Layered evaluation of interactive adaptive systems : framework and formative methods

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THE PERSONALIZATION-PRIVACY PARADOX EXPLORED THROUGH A PRIVACY CALCULUS MODEL AND HOFSTEDE’S MODEL OF CULTURAL DIMENSIONS

The Personalization-Privacy Paradox is a relevant issue for companies today, as it deals with the paradox of customers who on the one hand want to keep their personal data private, but on the other hand desire the personalization benefits that can be gained by giving up that privacy. Many studies in the past have observed the Personalization-Privacy Paradox, but not thoroughly through the lens of a privacy calculus model. This paper uses a privacy calculus model to examine the Personalization-Privacy Paradox using Hofstede’s Six Dimensions of Culture and examines the United States, Germany, and China as case studies of three different cultures. These three cultures all have a great deal of influence in the world and are world opinion leaders but have vast differences in cultural values and beliefs. This paper shows the importance for marketers, designers, and implementers of personalization services to understand diverse cultures and how their varied idioms, beliefs, and values affect how they will perceive benefits and costs of personalization services in their internal privacy calculus. The marked differences in cultural scores and how those cultural beliefs affect the perceptions of personalization and privacy demonstrate that companies looking to expand their services and applications into new markets cannot rely on universal approaches

Leverage web analytics for real time website browsing recommendations

Trabalho apresentado no 5th World Conference on Information Systems and Technologies (WorldCIST’17), 11-13 de abril 2017, Porto Santo, Madeira PortugalAs a websites’ structure grow it is paramount to accommodate the alignment of user needs and experience with the overall websites’ purposes. Toward this requirement, the proposed website navigation recommendation system suggests to users, pages that might be of her interest based on past successful navigation patterns of overall site’s usage. Most of existing recommendation systems adopts traditionally one of the web mining branches. We take a different stance, on web mining usage, and alternatively considered the real time enactment of web analytic tools supported analysis given their current maturity and affordances. On this basis we provide a model, its implementation and evaluation for navigation based recommendations generation and delivery. The developed prototype adopted a SaaS orientation to promote the underlying functionalities integration within any website. Preliminary evaluation’s results seem to favor the validation of the present contribution rational.N/