Although personalization has existed long before the advent of Artificial Intelligence (AI), recent advancement in AI-based technologies along with unprecedented access to individual data has enabled marketers to discover insightful patterns and predict consumer behavior more accurately. Adoption of these technologies leads to better and more enriched personalized experiences, which are likely to enhance the firm’s transactional outcomes (e.g., customer satisfaction) and the relational outcomes (e.g., customer loyalty).
Despite growing attention for increasing customer well-being in service and marketing literature, personalization researchers have been relatively silent on the impact of personalization on transformative outcomes. While initial research anticipates for positive well-being implications of personalization (e.g., recognition), other evidence refers to - among others - the emergence of privacy concerns with ill-being implications at the individual level and overconsumption as an ill-being implication at the societal level.
To better understand how personalization affects well-being/ill-being at customer and societal levels, this research opts for a discovery-oriented abductive approach. Specifically, we relied on in-depth interviews with 30 respondents using the critical incident technique and a document analysis of the ways in which personalized offerings are presented in company and third-party communication.
After triangulating the insights that emerged from these analyses with academic evidence on personalization, we propose that personalization goes along with three tensions at the customer level (1: feeling recognized versus exploited, 2: reduced information overload versus loss of control and 3: conscious versus conspicuous consumption) and three tensions at the societal level (1: social inclusion versus discrimination, 2: convenience versus surveillance society, and 3: circular versus linear economy).
This study responds to recent calls from transformative service researchers to investigate well-being at individual and societal level while also contributing to personalization literature by exploring its transformative potential. Along with theoretical and managerial implications, the paper concludes with a research agenda that transcends these six tensions and provides suggestions for how researchers might contribute new knowledge to this vital research area.

"While vaccination is the primary means of containing the pandemic, it must be supported by flanking measures - including the [Corona-warning]-app" (Lasarov 2021, cited by Illner 2021, transl. by the authors). Even though safe vaccines against COVID-19 have been available for almost a year (WHO 2020), vaccination rates are not as high as required in many countries around the world (Gensing/Reveland 2021). Low vaccination rates endanger human lives and favor mutations of the virus as recently shown by the Omicron variant. Smart transformative services such as digital contact tracing (DCT) apps are a successful means to track social contacts and break infection chains (Ferretti et al. 2020). Thus, DCT apps can help prevent the spread of the virus in addition to slow-roll vaccinations. As these apps are easily accessible for everyone obtaining a smartphone, they can offer transformative value (Blocker/Barrios 2015) to people who cannot get vaccinated or live in countries with no access to vaccines by allowing them to self-monitor contacts and thus protect themselves. Still, a critical mass of 60% coverage rate with DCT apps is required to make it work properly (Hinch et al. 2020) and to allow for transformative value creation. Therefore, it is crucial to understand which factors are increasing the usage intention of DCT apps. Consequently, we address the following research questions:

Which factors stimulate intention to use DCT apps?

Which strategies stimulating significant acceptance factors have the greatest impact to reach a critical coverage rate of 60% app users?

To answer these questions, we relied on the Unified Theory of Acceptance and Use of Technology (Venkatesh et al. 2003) and included additional factors to account for DCT app specific features such as the handling of personal health data or reliance on proper usage of other users. Hence, we included internet privacy concerns (Dinev/Hart 2006), trust in the system of the DCT app and trust in other app users to understand the usage intention of prospective DCT app users. We interrogated a representative sample of 948 German participants (50.8% females, Mage=44.01 years) to test our hypotheses. Performance expectancy emerges as a critical determinant of usage intention. Moreover, the two trust dimensions both directly and indirectly stimulate usage intention. Finally, we tested and validated the acceptance model with an agent based simulation analysis and, thus, reveal effective strategies for different app-related goals (e.g., to reach a certain coverage rate as fast as possible).

Our research offers several contributions: Firstly, by scrutinizing the potential of smart services like DCT apps as a supporting measure in the COVID-19 pandemic, we contribute to literature on transformative service research. To exploit DCT apps’ potential, we, secondly, seek to understand factors influencing their acceptance. In this vein, we are first to differentiate between two trust dimensions to get a more fine-grained understanding of the underlying cognitive processes. Thirdly, we present marketers with guidelines leading to the formulation of targeted strategies and policies for promoting the usage intention of DCT apps and inform future epidemic control for better emergency management.

Sustainable consumption patterns are becoming increasingly important. While demand for sustainable products steadily increases, services appear to be largely omitted from such developments (e.g. Frank, Brock 2018, Ostrom et al., 2015). However, the service sector has the economic impact for global social change. For instance, the tourism industry often has particularly negative social and environmental impacts. Even though tourists develop increased awareness and positive intentions towards sustainability, only a minority behaves sustainably (Holmes et al., 2021). This positive intentions and contrary behavior gap is referred to as intention-behavior gap (IBG).

Previous research identified customer, context, and interpersonal-related reasons for this gap. External ascription of responsibility (Zhang et al., 2021); consumer lifestyle (Carrington et al., 2014) and product-category involvement (Frank & Brock, 2018) were found to affect the sustainable IBG. But research concerning consumption barriers and the reduction of the IBG within the service sector is relatively scarce (Yamoah & Acquaye, 2019). Based on Ajzen’s (1991) theory of planned behavior, people with positive sustainability attitudes are interested in making their vacation trips sustainable. We assume where tourists are insufficiently informed or if relevant knowledge is lacking, they cannot make informed and responsible purchase decisions. Therefore, our research has two major contributions. First, we aim to examine sustainable IBG within a touristic service context. Second, we investigate the interplay of consumer knowledge, sustainable information with sustainable tourism behavior. Hence, we propose that tourists with positive sustainability attitudes, the positive relation between consumer knowledge and corresponding behavior is moderated by information transparency.
We conducted a CIT study (n=299) on the role of sustainability information within the touristic IBG. Participants with a positive sustainable tourism attitude indicated their general knowledge about sustainable travel and to what extent they perceived the provided sustainability information – transparent and credible – while planning or booking their last trip. For instance, we found a significant interaction effect between consumer knowledge and perceived information transparency in favor of sustainable travel behavior. Consumers with a sound knowledge of sustainable tourism report more sustainable travel behavior when they perceive the provided information as being transparent. We further found transparency impacted the perceived credibility of sustainability information.

Several implications for researchers and managers can be derived. As information asymmetries are inherent to services, information barriers play a crucial role for the IBG in this context. By highlighting the role of prior knowledge, we demonstrate that working on more sustainable tourism, different actors, such as tourism providers and policy makers, must be involved. Practitioners should offer their customers information about their sustainability measures. Policy makers are called upon to create information standards and to set up programs to impart consumer knowledge.
Further research is needed to determine what specific sustainability information tourists need. In particular it is important to evaluate and assess how effective and efficient communication measures can be designed and what effect they have on consumers. Furthermore, we encourage researchers to analyze sustainability information to increase transparency and credibility. This is a first step to reduce sustainable tourism services consumption barriers.