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The pervasiveness of the internet and the constant surge in internet usership makes the online environment an essential place for businesses to promote their products and brands. As at the second quarter of 2020, more than half (62 per cent) of the global population are said to be online – are internet users – indicating a 1,239 percent growth over the past two decades (Internet World Stats, 2020). More importantly, an estimated 1.92 billion people made online purchases in 2019, and online sales amounted to over $3.5 trillion accounting for 14.1 per cent of retail sales globally (Clement, 2020). Also, electronic retail revenues are expected to reach $6.54 trillion by 2022 (Statista, 2020), a projection that presupposes an increase in online shopping which is one of the most prevalent online activities worldwide. For this reason, most retailers are shifting their advertising efforts online. With increasing developments in targeting technologies, personalized display advertising has experienced tremendous growth. Although industry reports show that marketers and retailers are allotting portions of their budgets to personalized advertising (Guttmann, 2019) in order to enhance the effectiveness of their ads, they still face challenges regarding ways in which personalization efforts can be optimized to the benefit of consumers.
Notwithstanding the prevalence of personalized advertising, theoretical insights regarding its influence on consumer responses and decision-making is still embryonic (Bang & Wojdynski, 2016). Besides, extant prior studies have reported ambivalent findings concerning the effectiveness of personalized ads. Such studies have addressed the positive effects of personalization through mechanisms such as perceived relevance or usefulness (De Keyzer et al., 2015), as well as its negative effects explained by privacy concern and perceived intrusiveness (Baek & Morimoto, 2012; Tucker, 2014; Aguirre et al., 2016). Nonetheless, the literature seems limited in providing understanding of the circumstances under which the effects of personalization explained by these mechanisms may vary. Rodgers and Thorson (2000) argue that, to understand how consumers respond to advertising, it is vital to understand why they use a medium. Although people have diverse reasons for using the internet, prior studies have not examined the effects of personalization in different media usage situations. One plausible reason identified as accounting for this limitation is that, recent relevant studies that have inquired into online ad personalization with the exception of a few (Bleier & Eisenbess, 2015a; Bang & Wojdynski, 2016) have focused on social networking sites or social media platforms (e.g. De Keyzer et al., 2015; Tran, 2017; Dhanya and Jaidev, 2019) and mobile advertising (e.g., Kim & Han, 2014; Feng et al., 2016). Even though valuable, these specific focuses, limit the possibility of capturing responses of individuals with differing internet usage motive. Display ads can be seen on diverse sites including social networking sites, commercial websites, blogs, news sites etc. By focusing on personalization in the context of display advertising, this study provides added insight on how consumer motivation for internet usage may function as a contingency factor causing variations in their perceptions and online purchase intentions. Generally, studies show that when consumers are persuaded by advertising message, they form the desire or intention to purchase the advertised product or brand (Goodrich, 2013). In the online setting, shopping is considered the third most popular activity after emailing and surfing (Jamali et al., 2014) which underscores the importance of online purchase intention in examining the effects of personalized display ads.