Cognitive Dissonance, Social Comparison, and Disseminating Untruthful or Negative Truthful Ewom Messages

Abstract

In this research we explored consumers' intentions to provide untruthful or negative truthful electronic word-of-mouth (eWOM) messages when undergoing conflicting cognitive dissonance and after experiencing social comparison. We recruited 480 Taiwanese Internet users to participate in a scenario-based experiment. The findings show that after making downward comparisons on the Internet, consumers with high cognitive dissonance were more inclined to disseminate negative truthful eWOM messages compared to consumers with low cognitive dissonance. After making upward comparisons, it was found that consumers with high cognitive dissonance were more likely to make untruthful eWOM statements compared to those with low cognitive dissonance. It is recommended that marketers monitor eWOM in an effort to reduce the incidence of consumers' negative truthful and untruthful eWOM messages.

Do online reviews still matter post-purchase?

“…Meanwhile, social psychologists assert that when social comparison results in inconsistent beliefs concerning the target attribute, cognitive dissonance occurs (Festinger, 1962;Goethals, 1962). Cognitive dissonance refers to the mental discomfort experienced in holding contradictory beliefs, ideas or values; such contradictions could further shape one's beliefs about the target attribute (Festinger, 1962;Liu and Keng, 2014). In this study, the target is peer consumers, and the target attribute is the valence of the experience of peer consumers with the same service provider.…”

“…Further, Hess and Ring (2016) assert that the valence of WOM information about a service provider received in the post-failure stage affects consumers' satisfaction and trust towards that service provider. Additionally, eWOM information received in the post-purchase stage has been found to influence consumers' eWOM-giving behaviour (Liu and Keng, 2014), triggered by comparison as a social need of consumers (Alexandrov et al, 2013;Choi et al, 2017). Thus, in the post-consumption stage of a service, social comparison elicited by eWOM information is expected to influence consumers' evaluation of the service provider and further eWOM-giving.…”

“…Such comparisons might confirm their own beliefs of the consumption experience in the post-purchase phase, or they might trigger the consumers' re-evaluation of multiple aspects related to the consumption (Bearden and Rose, 1990;Dahl, 2013;Smeesters et al, 2009). This unique phenomenon reflects the consumers' social comparison (Liu and Keng, 2014). Social comparison theory asserts that individuals constantly confirm their understanding and perceptions with those of other people (Festinger, 1954).…”

‘Support your country and buy Chinese brands’ – would Chinese consumers buy it?

“…), with the same price and specifications as similar products of other domestic and foreign brands. We followed Liu and Keng (2014) in designing experimental messages that do not mention actual details of the mobile device (e.g., screen and battery size) or a specific brand name to avoid personal preference bias. In the treatment group (S2), the advertisement message introduced a domestic Chinese company and showed national identity messages.…”

I Can't Get You Out of My Head: The Influence of Secrecy on Consumers’ Self‐Brand Connections

“…In the consumer domain, because of the potential ethical issues associated with manipulating secrecy (Slepian et al., ; Wirtz & Kum, ), research has generally been limited to methodologies employing scenarios (Argo, White, & Dahl, ; Liu & Keng, ; Sengupta, Dahl, & Gorn, ), gaming (Argo & Shiv, ), and/or role‐playing (Andrade & Ho, ; Moran & Schweitzer, ). As a result, much of this research focuses on the intention to keep a secret, examined as a dependent variable.…”