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Vu, Chi, Ozuem, Wilson, Willis, Michelle and Katz, James (2026) Navigating trust and the personalization-privacy paradox in AI driven e-commerce: a consumer pathway framework. Journal of Retailing and Consumer Services. ISSN 0969-6989 (In Press)
As brands begin integrating artificial intelligence (AI) into their e-commerce systems, understanding consumers’ navigation of trust, privacy, and personalization within this domain will equip brands with successful consumer-centered, strategic approaches. This study explores how consumers calibrate trust in AI-enabled e-commerce, with particular attention to the personalization-privacy paradox, which is the tension between desiring tailored recommendations and resisting the data practices required to produce them. Through qualitative interviews and thematic analysis, the researchers established four interlocking mechanisms: affective orientations, stereotypical cognition, trust aversion, and trust calibration. These mechanisms were synthesized into a novel four-pathway framework called UCCG—utility-led (U), control-led (C), communication-led (C), and governance-led (G)—that explained how patterned combinations of trust and privacy perceptions generated distinct routes to commitment, reuse, and loyalty in AI-enabled e-commerce platforms. The findings demonstrated that consumer trust in AI is not a linear or uniform process, but a continuously adjusted, experience-based judgment shaped by the personalization-privacy paradox, such as AI technical performance, brands’ transparency practices, and perceived data governance practices. Transparency and user control emerged as critical trust antecedents, though their effectiveness varied across consumer pathways. This study extends personalization-privacy paradox and commitment-trust theory into the ecommerce AI context by theorizing trust and privacy tension as a dynamic, calibrated process, and offers managerial guidance for brands designing trust-centered e commerce AI experiences.
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Available under License Creative Commons Attribution Non-commercial No Derivatives 4.0.
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