User dissatisfaction and behavioral intention toward personalized advertising recommendation services in Chinese social networking services

With the advancements in digital advertising, personalized advertising recommendation services are being established as an increasingly important marketing tool. In particular, social networking service (SNS) platforms in China are offering personalized advertising experiences through an extensive user base. However, such services often fail to meet the needs and expectations of Chinese users. Accordingly, this study aimed to explore user dissatisfaction and the resulting negative responses to personalized advertising recommendation services on Chinese SNS platforms. The analysis for this study was conducted using structural equation modeling based on data from 500 Chinese SNS users. The effects of service failure on negative expectation disconfirmation and dissatisfaction as well as how this dissatisfaction affects negative behaviors among users were examined. The results showed that factors related to service failure, such as functional failure, information failure, and system failure, positively affected users’ negative expectation disconfirmation, while functional failure, system failure, and negative expectation disconfirmation positively affected dissatisfaction. Moreover, dissatisfaction positively affected negative word-of-mouth and discontinuance intentions. This study identified negative responses to personalized advertising recommendation services on SNS advertising platforms, which can be used by companies to minimize negative outcomes by effectively managing user expectations.