Consumer Trust, Perceived Authenticity, and Personalized Digital Marketing: A Quantitative Decision-Science Study

Abstract

Personalized digital marketing has become a central mechanism for delivering relevant consumer experiences, although its effectiveness increasingly depends on consumer trust, perceived authenticity, privacy evaluations, and perceptions of control. This study quantitatively examined the relationships among personalized digital marketing, perceived authenticity, consumer trust, privacy concern, perceived intrusiveness, and behavioral decision outcomes using a cross-sectional explanatory decision-science framework. The final analytical sample included 684 digital consumers, representing a 92.2% questionnaire-retention rate and 99.4% final data completeness. Personalized advertising had been encountered by 76.9% of respondents, while 73.5% had previous recommendation-system experience. Consumer trust averaged 3.82, perceived authenticity 3.79, recommendation relevance 3.91, perceived value 3.88, and privacy concern 3.67. Consumer trust was positively correlated with authenticity (r = .66), brand credibility (r = .63), recommendation relevance (r = .59), and personalization accuracy (r = .56), whereas privacy concern (r = −.38) and perceived intrusiveness (r = −.46) were negatively associated with trust. In the adjusted model, authenticity was the strongest positive predictor of trust (β = .28), while intrusiveness produced the strongest negative effect (β = −.18). Trust significantly predicted purchase intention (β = .34), continued usage (β = .39), repurchase intention (β = .41), electronic word-of-mouth (β = .32), and loyalty (β = .43). Mediation analysis identified significant indirect personalization effects through authenticity and trust, including an indirect effect of β = .18 on loyalty. The integrated structural model demonstrated satisfactory fit, with CFI = .952, TLI = .945, RMSEA = .045, and SRMR = .040, explaining 63.4% of variance in trust, 60.1% in purchase intention, 62.8% in recommendation acceptance, and 64.3% in loyalty. The findings demonstrated that effective personalization depended on balancing relevance and authenticity with privacy protection, transparency, and consumer control, while trust served as a central mechanism translating personalized marketing evaluations into sustained behavioral decisions.