The purpose of this qualitative study is to advance an understanding of trust and perceived intrusiveness in online advertising. The theoretical framework in this thesis is based upon theories about trust and intrusiveness that derives from previous research. The theory of psychological reactance is a further constituent. These concepts and theories are defined and discussed. and possible models are introduced. Semi-structured interviews with eight individuals of the Net Generation have been conducted to gather empirical data. The recordings from these interviews have thereafter been transcribed. in order to analyse the collected data, we have adopted a thematic analysis consisting of six phases. We coded the data and created themes that were detected during the different phases. The empirical data has been gathered by conduction of eight semi-structured interviews with individuals of the Net Generation. These interview have thereafter been transcribed and its content coded as a first step of the analysis. Three global themes derived from the empirical data analysis; trust, intrusiveness and observed relations, and many basic themes defined and analysed and discussed. We conclude our study advancing our findings about an understanding of trust and perceived intrusiveness in online advertising, as well as some observed relations noticed during the analysis. We finish our thesis with some managerial implications about the importance for managers and advertisers to take into account trust and intrusiveness, as well as leads for further studies, including the testing of our developed research model through a quantitative strategy.

The Swedish consumers are concerned of their online privacy, while companies increasingly gather personal information with business intelligence (BI) technologies in order to customize online banner ads, among the favoured marketing techniques. Meanwhile, marketers treasure the opportunity to target individuals. The purpose of this research is to generate insights of Swedes’ experiences of intrusion of their privacy online, and their behavioural response to personalised banner advertisements. The research will also observe if there are differences depending on the consumers’ ages. Mediating factors will be regarded how they influence the online users perceived intrusiveness and usefulness of personalised ads. The study is exploratory and aims to provide extensive awareness and beliefs around a complex phenomena. It will have a qualitative approach where data collection is conducted through semi-structured, in-depth, interviews with Swedish consumers from two age groups, complemented by three expert interviews. The results show that, in comparison, elderly consumers have less knowledge of personalised advertising, as well as BI-technology, leading to higher privacy concern and perceived intrusiveness when exposed to these ads. Members of the generation Y comprehend the phenomena to a greater extent, and more easily see the usefulness presented, but are overall ambiguous. Attitudes are likely to be formed based on the experienced intrusiveness contra usefulness, but are not clearly influencing trust, loyalty of future purchasing behaviours. Generally, marketers and consumers’ views show incongruence, as marketers remain very positive to using personal information to customize ads, while consumers do not always perceive it similarly. A balance can be difficult to achieve, but a unanimous belief demand high accuracy of content and placement of the personalised ads to be perceived as useful.