How to build customer loyalty and retain customers are important issues for most businesses. Personalized services have been used as a strategy for such purposes. The advancement of information technology has enabled a business to keep track of customer preferences and provide personalized services accordingly. Several theories have been proposed to explain the effect of positive customer attitude toward personalized services, such as reducing information overload and the Elaboration Likelihood Model. This study is focus on the perspective of intimate relationship with customers through personalized services, and proposes that the intimacy relationship induced from personalized advertising plays a major role in building customer loyalty. An experiment was designed to test our hypotheses. An experimental website was developed to interact with the subjects for building relationship. Experimental advertisement was then sent to the subject for evaluation. The experiment results in 355 completed data, which were then analyzed using the SPSS and SmartPLS. The results reveal that (1)personalized content has a significant effect intimacy;(2) Personalized message doesn¡¦t influence intimacy;(3)customer intimacy has effects on the attitude toward advertising and customer¡¦s purchasing intention. We also find that the relationship between customer intimacy and the recommendation effect was not significantly different for different product categories.

Nowadays, consumers are lack of interest for advertisement because they are flooded by advertising. Therefore, advertisers try to motivate consumers to process ads. From the advertising literature, rhetorical devices can be attention-getting, arousing, and affect inducing and memorable. Specifically, the use of metaphors expends dimensional thinking and enhances ad responses. This research proposes two types of metaphors: juxtaposition vs. replacement. It examines the moderating effects of product type and consumers¡¦ gender differences on metaphor advertising. The present study uses experimental design with a 3(metaphor advertising: non-metaphor vs. juxtaposition vs. replacement) x2 (product type: search good vs. experience good) x2 (gender difference: male vs. female) factorial design. Six different scenarios are established through fictitious product ads, and the ad effects are measured by attitudes toward the ad, attitudes toward the brand, and purchase intention to observe the responses under different scenarios. The results indicate that the metaphor advertising is more effective than the non-metaphor advertising. In promoting a search good, the replacement metaphor is more effective than the juxtaposition metaphor. On the contrary, the juxtaposition is more effective than replacement in promoting an experience good. When females face metaphor ads for promoting a search good, the replacement is more effective than the juxtaposition. However, no such differences are found in males.The findings suggest that marketers should consider not only the product type they promote but also the gender of their target consumers in order to enhance the advertising effects.