Taming the Information Beast: Content Customization and Its Impact on Media Enjoyment for Online Consumers

As technologies continue to evolve, customized online environments are becoming evermore popular with consumers as they help manage information flow in the online space while limiting exposure to advertising. This study examines the effect of customization, desire for control, and information overload on media enjoyment. Level of customization has a positive impact on a consumer‟s media enjoyment regardless of their desire for control or feelings of information overload. High desire for control subjects exposed to keyword advertising had the greatest media enjoyment. Non-intrusive keyword advertising did not impede media enjoyment while the presence of banner advertising did effect media enjoyment.


Introduction
In marketing, an increase of perceived control is linked to pleasantness in service and consumption experiences (Chandran & Morwitz 2005;Faranda 2001). Rubin (1993) has further demonstrated a positive correlation between control and communication motivation for pleasure. Within the context of interactive media, Liu and Shrum (2002) have developed a theoretical model for interactivity and found that desire for control is a key factor in obtaining satisfaction from the interactive process. They suggest that people who have a high desire for control will be more satisfied with interactivity than people who have a low desire for control.
Thus, consumers with a high desire for control who are able to exert a sense of personal agency in their choice of online media content should have an increase in the level of enjoyment they experience in the online environment.
HI: Consumers with a high desire for control will perceive greater media enjoyment when experiencing a customized media environment (high customization) versus a standard web environment (low customization).
HII: Consumers with a low desire for control will perceive greater media enjoyment when experiencing a standard web environment (low customization) than a customized media environment (high customization).
High control consumers navigating a customized media environment should feel satisfaction as they process information which they have self-selected according to their interests. If such an environment is successful in generating an enjoyable state, according to Sicilia and Ruiz (2000), information processing capabilities should increase.

Data Analysis and Results
To insure the validity of univariate statistical tests, such as those conducted herein, the dependent variables must meet several criteria, including 1) independent observations, 2) normal distribution of variables, and 3) homogeneity of variances (HOV). The first assumption was met by the random assignment of subjects into one of six experimental conditions. Thus, the low customization conditions with advertising (banner and keyword conditions) as well as the high customization condition without advertising all contained forty subjects, while the low customization condition with no advertising and the high customization conditions with advertising contained thirty-nine subjects, respectively. To determine that all variables indeed have normal distributions, the dependent variable was evaluated for skewness. The media enjoyment summated scale was negatively skewed to a minimal degree (skewness = -0.29). Given that no skewness score was in excess of +1.0 or - Therefore, Hypotheses I and II are partially confirmed.

Hypotheses III and IV
The next series of hypotheses concern how a subject"s level of information overload (high vs.  Thus, regardless of their degree of information overload, subjects perceived greater media enjoyment dependent upon their exposure to customization. Those subjects who were given the choice to customize their online environments (M=4.81, SD=0.86) experienced greater media enjoyment than those subjects who did not receive the option to customize (M=4.60, SD=0.85). Therefore, Hypothesis III and IV are partially confirmed.

Hypotheses V and VI
A consumer"s level of information overload, in conjunction with their desire for control, could potentially impact their experience with customized online environments as well as the types of advertising present therein. To investigate the interactions between customization, type of advertising, and desire for control, while holding degree of information overload constant, a 2 x 2 x 2 ANCOVA analysis was undertaken including only those subjects who were exposed to advertising in the online environments (N = 158). As with all mass media, customized online environments will have a certain degree of advertising present. Therefore, it is intuitive to investigate those subjects who were exposed to advertising via a customized online environment.