E-commerce companies face a constant question: how much should they personalize their sites? We conducted a study of more than 300 on-line consumers and found out what some of them might not have realized themselves. Rather than have some state-of-the-art technology figure out their interests and surprise and delight them with products and services they would undoubtedly love, most consumers would prefer to just customize Web site interactions for themselves.
A version of this article appeared in the April 2001 issue of Harvard Business Review.
