New research from Dr Jeeyeon Kim, Lecturer in Marketing, has explored how to make app notifications more effective for businesses, and less annoying for consumers.
“Mobile apps increasingly rely on push notifications to keep users engaged,” she explains. “But when messages are too frequent or irrelevant, they can have the opposite effect.”
“This results in what we call notification fatigue, where users become overwhelmed or alienated by excessive or irrelevant messaging.”
To address this, Dr Kim’s research examines how to optimise the personalisation of notifications to sustain user engagement.
Drawing on a randomised field experiment involving more than 500 users of a pet activity-monitoring app in South Korea, Dr Kim found that personalised notifications enhance engagement by increasing users’ sense of relevance and timeliness, outperforming generic messages.
“More importantly, notifications featuring both the caregiver and companion names produced the highest engagement levels. Interestingly, adding a user’s engagement history also boosted results, but not beyond the effect of name-based personalisation,” she explains.
“This research shows how thoughtful personalisation can strengthen user relationships and drive meaningful engagement,” Dr Kim says. “It also highlights the value of collaborating with industry partners to test strategies in real-world settings.”
