Online information sharing issues in website personalization

Abstract

Website Personalization is one of strategic technique in delivering services in online applications. A part of process for building personalization applications is to collect particular information from the user which involves information sharing. However, the awareness about privacy concerns and security threats have caused to non-sharing behavior among the Internet Users. This situation have caused website personalization cannot be built to serve its purposes. This paper aims to investigate the people's behavior and to study the propensity of information sharing attitude in two different environments and cultures. The two environments are between real-life and online while the two cultures are between Malaysian and non-Malaysian. Since this is an exploratory study, interview with five (5) persons have been conducted. The qualitative technique that chooses was recommended for any exploratory study. The findings of this study explained the understanding of behaviors and the factors of Information Sharing. The factors are the cultural factors, the platform of sharing and the behavior of information sharing in web personalization. The sharing behavior in two environments and cultures were also compared. The data collected from the interviews have generalizing the speculations and issues in information sharing which have been discussed at the end section of this paper. ©2010 IEEE.