Consumers show increasing levels of concern regarding disclosing information to companies, as retailers’ access to their personal information heightens their feelings of vulnerability. Although customers’ personal information is crucial for targeting actual and potential customers, the extant discussion regarding the determinants of customers’ willingness to disclose personal information is limited. Drawing upon social judgment theory, this study investigates how consumers experience different levels of perceived warmth, which alleviates privacy concerns and, in turn, affects their willingness to disclose personal information during different stages of the online customer purchase journey.

A mixed-method design combining a focus group (Study 1), an online experiment, a field study and a laboratory experiment (Studies 2, 3 and 4) provide a multifaceted representation of this phenomenon. The results show that compared to the prepurchase phase, asking for personal information at the end of the online customer purchase journey (i.e., purchase and postpurchase phases) leads to a higher perception of warmth and lower privacy concerns, thereby increasing customers’ disclosure of personal data. The findings are robust to consumers’ brand familiarity and other relevant sociodemographic variables. This research provides insightful theoretical and practical implications for retailers regarding how to enhance perceived warmth and improve customers’ willingness to disclose personal information.

随着零售商对个人信息的访问加剧了他们的脆弱感，消费者越来越担心将信息泄露给公司。尽管客户的个人信息对于以实际和潜在客户为目标至关重要，但有关客户是否愿意披露个人信息的决定因素的现有讨论是有限的。基于社会判断理论，本研究调查了消费者如何体验不同程度的感知温暖，从而减轻了对隐私的担忧，进而影响了他们在在线客户购买旅程的不同阶段中披露个人信息的意愿。

结合了焦点小组（研究1），在线实验，现场研究和实验室实验（研究2、3和4）的混合方法设计可以从多种角度说明这种现象。结果表明，与购买前阶段相比，在在线客户购买旅程结束时（即购买和购买后阶段）询问个人信息可以提高人们对温暖的认识并降低对隐私的担忧，从而增加了客户对个人信息的披露数据。该发现对消费者的品牌熟悉度和其他相关的社会人口统计学变量具有鲁棒性。这项研究为零售商提供有关如何增强感知的温暖度以及提高客户公开个人信息的意愿的深刻的理论和实践意义。