Anthropomorphized virtual recommendation agent (VRA) is able to help potential consumers to get information more effective and efficient by minimizing the problem in searching and choosing the right product. Many prior studies examined the benefits of utilizing anthropomorphized VRA, yet the study of disadvantage of VRA is still remain underdeveloped. Hence, this study wants to further investigate about the dark side of anthropomorphism in VRA, especially when it is combined with personalization. Consumers’ reactions after interacting with anthropomorphized VRA such as their perceived privacy concern, attitude towards advertisement and willingness to provide sensitive information will be examined here. This research is an experimental study with 42 respondents participated in pre-test and 218 respondents participated in study 1. All of the respondents were recruited using Amazon Mechanical Turk. The findings showed that anthropomorphized VRA can raise problem about privacy issues. The more VRA resembles like a real person and able to do personalization, the more consumers perceived that they being scrutinized and profiled online. It will make them have negative attitude towards any interactive marketing from VRA and less likely to give their personal information. There are research implications and future research directions to be explained.

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