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
