Whether a person's attitude is predictive or consistent with their behavior is a topic that has generated much research in the literature. The current study attempts to address this research question using a big data approach in a social media advertising context. Both attitude (i.e. clicking the "like" button for a company's Facebook posts) and behavior (i.e. purchasing products from the company) are measured in a naturalistic setting. The goal is to examine whether Facebook "likes" on companies' posts are significantly related to those companies' revenue. The authors estimate panel models by using nearly eight years of data containing the S&P 500 companies' Facebook activities in conjunction with their financial performance information. The results suggest that the number of Facebook "likes" is positively associated with revenue across the models. The study concludes with specific theoretical and practical implications and limitations.

To examine within what kind of social network and with what motivation people tend to share news with their Facebook friends, a 2 (network homophily: high vs. low) x 2 (network size: large vs. small) x 2 (news type: real vs. fake) between-subjects experiment (N = 366) was conducted. The experimental results suggested that network homophily positively influenced news sharing intention, regardless of news type. Furthermore, network size moderated the relationship between network homophily and news sharing intention, but only for real news. Finally, three motivation factors, including socializing, information seeking, and status seeking, were found to be significant mediators to explain this news sharing behavior.

Marketers always incline to deliver advertising messages to the right consumer at the right time. Yet, the question of when exactly should such a persuasive message be sent to a consumer remains elusive in the existing literature. The current study aims to address this research question within the theoretical framework of contextual marketing. The authors argue that contextual information such as time and weather can be used to design more effective mobile advertising campaigns on social media. The results of a field experiment in cooperation with a local restaurant suggest that ads delivered at consumers’ pre-decision stage (i.e., non-meal time) are more effective than those delivered at the decision stage (i.e., meal time) to increase consumer spending on the dining-in service. Furthermore, unpleasant weather conditions (i.e., less sunlight) are found to improve the effectiveness of advertising on consumer spending on mobile app food delivery orders. Overall, the authors open future research avenues by demonstrating how and why the two contextual factors, time and weather, influence digital consumer behavior.

In recent times, the spread of false or "fake" anti-vaccination news and information on social media has been linked to the global rise of vaccine hesitancy, resulting in increased vaccine-preventable disease outbreaks. As such, the current study employed the Heuristic Systematic Model (HSM) to elucidate the effect of certain cognitive heuristics on the perceived credibility and sharing motivations of fake anti-vaccination news on social media. The study used a 3 (emotion: anger vs. fear vs. neutral) x 3 (attitude: pro-vaccine vs. anti-vaccine vs. neutral) x 2 (social endorsements: low vs. high) between-subjects factorial design (N = 656). Two-way interaction effects were found between emotion and attitude on both perceived credibility of fake news and selfexpression motivation to share the news. A three-way interaction effect was also found between emotion, attitude, and social endorsements on status-seeking motivation to share the news. These findings reveal consistent evidence that fear motivates anti-vaccine individuals to believe in and share fake news, while anger motivates people who are neutral towards vaccines to do so. Theoretical and practical implications are discussed.

Purpose Narrative comments about dentists on physician review sites have been documented to increasingly influence people's selection of their dentists. From a communication standpoint, these comments are a type of narrative communication that people share their experiences with dentists by telling stories. Based on the frameworks of rhetoric structure theory and extended elaborated likelihood model, this study aimed to examine the effects of such storytelling from two perspectives including narrative structure and narrative focus. Design/methodology/approach A 4 (narrative structure) × 2 (narrative focus) between-subjects experiment was conducted to examine the proposed hypotheses and research questions Findings The results showed that a one-sided comprehensive comment focusing on technical competence generated the strongest persuasion effects measured by attitude and behavioral intention. These effects were mediated by perceived narrative credibility and enjoyment. Originality/value This study contributes to the extant literature in two ways. First, it extends previous studies of online narrative comments by showing which narrative structure and focus are deemed to be more persuasive when selecting a dentist. Second, it offers a test of two routes of information processing (i.e. cognitive and experiential) to understand the mechanism underlying the effects of narrative comments. Peer review The peer-review history for this article is available at: https://publons.com/publon/10.1108/OIR-08-2020-0359

Purpose As the epidemic of online fake news is causing major concerns in contexts such as politics and public health, the current study aimed to elucidate the effect of certain “heuristic cues,” or key contextual features, which may increase belief in the credibility and the subsequent sharing of online fake news. Design/methodology/approach This study employed a 2 (news veracity: real vs fake) × 2 (social endorsements: low Facebook “likes” vs high Facebook “likes”) between-subjects experimental design ( N = 239). Findings The analysis revealed that a high number of Facebook “likes” accompanying fake news increased the perceived credibility of the material compared to a low number of “likes.” In addition, the mediation results indicated that increased perceptions of news credibility may create a situation in which readers feel that it is necessary to cognitively elaborate on the information present in the news, and this active processing finally leads to sharing. Practical implications The results from this study help explicate what drives increased belief and sharing of fake news and can aid in refining interventions aimed at combating fake news for both communities and organizations. Originality/value The current study expands upon existing literature, linking the use of social endorsements to perceived credibility of fake news and information, and sheds light on the causal mechanisms through which people make the decision to share news articles on social media.

Using spiral of silence and social loafing theories, this study proposed a parallel mechanism to explain why people defend their stances on controversial sociopolitical issues through political consumption behaviors (i.e., boycott and buycott) when they read about corporate advocacy messages on social media. A 2 (personal stance: supporting vs. opposing gun control) × 3 (other Instagram commenters’ stances: majority supporting gun control vs. majority opposing gun control vs. balanced opinions) between-subjects quasi-experiment was conducted to test the mediating effects of feeling of being in the majority opinion group and feeling of others not contributing enough on boycott/buycott intentions. Results showed that people defend their stances through boycott/buycott actions, because of the feeling of being in the majority opinion group.

In recent years, scholars have documented an increase in flaming behavior, which refers to a strong and hostile expression of emotions and feelings online. In order to identify the mechanism and specific circumstances of flaming, this study employed emotional contagion as the main theoretical framework and conducted a 2 (argument presented in a news article: support gun control vs. against gun control) x 2 (volume of negative comments: small vs. large) x 2 (news readers' pre-existing beliefs: support gun control vs. against gun control) between-subjects experiment. Participants were asked to read an online news article about a gun-related topic as well as negative reader comments before they wrote a comment of their own. The experimental results showed that participants were more likely to use swear words in their comments when their viewpoint was diametrically opposed to the argument presented in the news article and when the article was accompanied by a low volume of negative comments. This interaction effect was mediated by negative emotions that participants experienced when reading the article and its associated comments. These findings have theoretical implications for future research pertaining to the identification of online circumstances and causes that could help mitigate the occurrence of flaming.

Perception of products has becoming one of the most important factors influencing consumers’ purchase intention in the context of online shopping. Thus, enriching and studying review presentation formats have been significant things for practitioners and researchers. This study employed dual coding theory and telepresence theory to investigate the effects of review presentation formats (text-based reviews, image-based reviews and video-based reviews) on consumers’ purchase intention, and then analysed the moderation effect of product type. The 3×2 between-subject situational experiment and 3×2 within-subject eye-tracking experiment design were separately applied to test the hypotheses. The results manifested that review presentation formats exactly could generate different impacts on consumers’ purchase intentions. And product type moderated the impact of presentation formats on purchase intentions. Hence, this research considered online vendors should pay more attention to image-based and video-based reviews, moreover take the product type into account.

This study used a 2 (type of news: fake vs. real) × 2 (presence of negative user comments: yes vs. no) × 2 (presence of positive user comments: yes vs. no) between-subjects experimental design to examine the differences in perceived news credibility and sharing intention between fake news and real news on vaccination. Fake news was found to generate a lower level of perceived credibility than real news, which subsequently decreased news sharing intention. Furthermore, negative user comments significantly lowered perceived news credibility, and this was especially true for real news. However, this adverse effect was found to be mitigated by the presence of positive user comments. The experimental results have important theoretical and practical implications for future research on fake news about health and science.

Attitude toward the ad is an important construct frequently measured in advertising and marketing research. However, it is somewhat ambiguous in regard to how to quantify attitude toward the ad with a numerical scale. This study examines the practice and effect of using arbitrary scales when measuring attitude toward the ad (i.e., 1–5, 1–7, 1–9, 0–10, and 0–100). A longitudinal experiment with thousands of adult participants (Time 1: n = 2,366, Time 2: n = 1,165) was conducted. The experimental results revealed that different scales, in general, will lead to consistent findings, but if the conventional p < .05 criterion is used, the study conclusion may differ. Based on these findings, theoretical discussions and practical recommendations are provided.

An increasing number of nonprofits are interacting with their current and prospective donors on social media. How to elicit donations effectively through social media, however, remains under-researched. This study applied the optimal matching theory to examine online interactions between nonprofit organizations and their followers. A 2 (valence of organizational post: positive vs. negative) × 2 (type of social support: emotional vs. informational) between-subjects experiment was conducted to investigate how the match between a nonprofit organization’s need and its followers’ social support impacts third-party observers’ perceived relationship satisfaction and donation intention. The mediation effect of enacted social support evaluation (i.e., perceived helpfulness, supportiveness, and sensitiveness) was also examined. It was found that organizational post valence exerted an indirect effect on third-party observers’ perceived relationship satisfaction and donation intention through perceived supportiveness and helpfulness. These mediation effects were conditional on the type of social support provided by online followers of the organization.

This study presents one of the earliest empirical studies that evaluates the effects of different interactivity and message design aspects of augmented reality (AR) advertising on consumer response. Specifically, this research examined whether and how AR interaction type (i.e., instrumental versus hedonic), ad context (i.e., realistic versus imaginative), and product type (think versus feel) jointly influence perceived ad informativeness and brand liking. A laboratory experiment with 213 college students was conducted using print ads with marker-based AR technology. The results suggested the effectiveness of instrumental AR interaction and the mediating role of telepresence. Based on the study findings, theoretical and strategic implications are discussed.

Many online information systems are delivering personalized news to users today. The essence of this personalization process is to match a news article to the reader’s self-identity. However, prior studies mostly focus on matching a positive news story to a person’s desired identity. No known research has discussed the possibility of matching a negative news story to a person’s undesired identity. This study aims to fill this theoretical gap by testing a three-way interaction effect among news valence, identity desirability, and uniqueness on attitude toward the news story. Through a 2 × 2 × 2 between-subjects experiment, it is shown that a positive news story tends to generate a more favorable attitude when matched to the reader’s desired self-identity, whereas a negative news story will generate a more favorable attitude when matched to the person’s undesired self-identity, and such an effect is especially pronounced when the identity is unique. Perceived news credibility is found to partially mediate these effects.

Given the rapid growth of many Asian economies in recent years, Asian advertising research is attracting increasing attention. However, systematic examinations of how to move this body of research forward from both theoretical and methodological perspectives are lacking. This study discusses a method-related issue in Asian advertising research, specifically focusing on the rating scale length used in measuring consumer attitude and behavioral intention. The experiment examines whether using different rating scale lengths (i.e., 1–3, 1–5, 1–7, and 1–9) will produce inconsistent research results due to the influence of Confucianism on East Asian consumers’ response style. Based on the experimental findings, a theoretical discussion of how to consider the cultural impact on measurement in an East Asian advertising context is provided.

ABSTRACT To investigate boycott and buycott as responses to brand activism, this study adopted a 2 (consumer personal stance: consistent vs. inconsistent with the target company) × 2 (magnitude of public support: personal stance congruent with majority vs. minority) × 2 (perceived credibility of public support information: high vs. low) between-subjects experimental design. The experimental findings suggested a moderated moderated mediation effect: Consumers tend to buycott (or boycott) a company when their personal stances on a sociopolitical issue are consistent (or inconsistent) with the company’s, and such effects are mediated by brand attitude and moderated by magnitude of public support and perceived credibility of public support information.

PurposeThis study examines the effects of employees' personal social media posts on external publics' online engagement and offline word-of-mouth (WOM) intentions about a company. Specifically, it investigates how employee post characteristics including valence and content and employer reputation jointly influence publics' online and offline behaviors.Design/methodology/approachA 2 (post valence: positive vs. negative) × 2 (post content: organization-related vs. job-related) × 2 (employer reputation: good vs. bad) between-subjects experiment was conducted. Participants were asked to view a stimulus social media post created by a fictitious company employee, reflecting one of the eight experimental conditions on a random basis. After viewing, they were requested to report their online engagement intentions (i.e., “like,” “share” and “comment”) with the post and offline WOM intentions about the company.FindingsThe experimental results showed that participants expressed more “like” intentions when they viewed a positive post than a negative post. Further, they were more likely to “comment” on a job-related post as opposed to an organization-related post. In addition, a significant interaction effect between post valence and employer reputation on publics' online engagement was found, which in turn influenced their offline WOM intentions about the company.Originality/valueThis study is among the first empirical attempts to examine the effectiveness of employees' personal social media posts on external publics' online and offline behaviors. The experimental findings highlight the importance of managing employee relations from a corporate reputation perspective.

ABSTRACT This study proposes a theoretical model that provides a segmentation method of publics based on their cognitive, affective, and behavioral responses toward corporate social advocacy (CSA). As one of the initial efforts in building a theory of CSA in public relations scholarship, the model segments consumers based on three outcome variables – boycott intention, purchase intention, and corporate reputation. This model also incorporates consumer-company congruence, company-cause fit, consumer-cause fit, and issue involvement as antecedent variables. A survey of 482 adult consumers found that consumer-company congruence and company-cause fit had significant negative impacts on boycott intention, but positive influences on purchase intention. Consumer-company congruence, company-cause fit, and consumer-cause fit all had significant positive impacts on corporate reputation. Moreover, interaction effects between company-cause fit and consumers’ involvement with the specific CSA issue were found significant on both boycott intention and purchase intention. How these findings help advance the understanding of publics in a CSA context is discussed.

This study provides an alternative way to conceptualize personalized advertising and discusses when and why nonpersonalized information can be more effective than personalized information in changing people's attitudes and behavioral intentions. Different from the traditional personalization approach in the literature that personalizes a message for an individual, this alternative way of thinking is to personalize an individual for a message. It is argued that an individual can be personalized for a message via priming tactics and it leads to reverse personalization effects where a nonpersonalized message generates stronger persuasion effects than a personalized message. The effects of priming on personalization are moderated by perceived prime credibility and mediated by perceived message relevance.