Consumers will give up data for personalized shopping, survey says

How much do consumers value their privacy online? 64% would provide information about their preferences and 56% would provide demographic information to obtain a more personalized shopping experience, says a new survey from ChoiceStream, provider of online personalization systems. 81% of Internet users in the survey say they would like to receive personalized content.

The findings are based on a survey of 673 respondents conducted via Zoomerang, an online survey services provider.

The survey also finds that younger consumers are more likely to provide preference and demographic information. Among 18- to 34-year-olds, 71% expressed a willingness to provide preference information (vs. 57% of those 35 and older) and 63% would provide demographic data (vs. 49% of those 35 and older).

Respondents’ willingness to provide information in exchange for personalization extended, for many, to allowing a web site to track their clicks and purchases. Overall, 40% of consumers would agree to that type of click-through or transaction monitoring, and again, younger respondents were more willing to allow it than older ones: 47% vs. 32%.

While the survey found that 81% of consumers are interested in receiving personalized content, the type of content respondents are interested in personalizing varies based on age. Younger respondents (18- to 24-year-olds) are most interested in receiving entertainment-related content such as personalized music recommendations (45%), DVDs (29%) and books (26%). Among older respondents, particularly those 50 and older, personalized web search results are of the greatest interest (35%), followed by books (30%), news (22%) and travel (21%).