Technological advances have enabled firms to personalize advertisements, recommendations, products, and services to individual consumers. This article shows that personalization can backfire when it embarrasses consumers. Study 1 demonstrates that consumers are embarrassed and respond less favorably to retailers offering a personalized shopping experience when they are purchasing a stigmatized product (weight-loss medication) but not when they are purchasing a neutral product (headache medicine). Study 2 similarly shows how personalization can backfire in the context of an online music streaming service; consumers respond less favorably to a service that recommends playlists associated with dissociative identities when they believe the recommendations were personalized. Lastly, Study 3 demonstrates this effect using a field experiment in which participants believe they are seeing a personalized or nonpersonalized advertisement evoking a stigmatized condition (poor skin) or positive condition (clear skin). When consumers received personalized product or service associated with a dissociative or stigmatized identity, they feel more embarrassed, which causes them to respond less favorably toward the business compared with if they had received a nonpersonalized product or service.
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