The Impact of Channel Context and Task on Consumers' Evaluations of Personalized Health Recommendation Systems

We investigate consumer perspectives on complex, multistage systems designed to provide personalized health recommendations. We conceptualize the underlying benefit trade-offs that consumers make in evaluating such systems as the manifestation of a psychological contract in which consumers contribute their personal information and effort in exchange for a more useful, tailored recommendation by the firm. We show that consumer benefit perceptions are differentially affected by the stages of such a system, and that the channel context in which the use of a personalized health recommendation system originates moderates the impact of consumer benefit perceptions on consumer willingness to use such systems.