A new survey conducted by McKinsey has revealed that a slim majority of British consumers have committed to schemes that send them tailor-made marketing messages with deals available via safe shopping online that are relevant to their tastes.

Internet Retailing reports that this practice is marginally more popular in the UK than it is in France and Germany, while across the pond in the US a larger 55 per cent slice of shoppers have embraced personalisation as a means of engaging with the brands and outlets they use regularly.

Respondents to the study were also asked to indicate whether or not the promotional messages they receive via email, text and social networking felt too generic and broad to be appealing. 42 per cent of Brits said that this was indeed the case, suggesting that there is still a lot of room for improvement in terms of how well adapted ads are to individual expectations and requirements.

The most common type of personalised promotion identified by UK consumers was that which involved referring to products that they had searched for on shopping sites in the past. This is a tactic that is regularly used by the likes of Amazon to remind customers of their prospective purchases in an attempt to get them to go through with the sale.

Those questioned were further asked to pinpoint the most problematic and invasive forms of marketing messaging that are sent to them, with 40 per cent of Britons saying that location-based promotions could be especially unsettling if they came out of the blue.

Such communications are more of an issue for female shoppers than they are for their male counterparts, but both genders expressed concerns about this area, which is something that retailers need to take into account going forwards.