The impact of COVID‐19 on consumer evaluation of authentic advertising messages

Abstract

This study investigates the relationship between the COVID‐19 threat and consumer evaluation of a product with authenticity appeals in advertisements. We propose that threatening situations like COVID‐19 motivate consumers to lower their uncertainty and increase their preference for products with authentic advertising messages. Because individuals react differently to threatening environments according to their early‐life experiences, commonly reflected in childhood socioeconomic status, we examined whether childhood socioeconomic status moderates the relationship between threat and consumer evaluation of authenticity in advertisements. First, secondary data from Google Trends provided empirical support for our predictions. In additional experimental studies, participants evaluated different target products in four studies that either manipulated (Studies 2 and 3) or measured (Studies 4 and 5) COVID‐19 threat. Our results provide converging evidence that consumers positively evaluate products with authentic advertising messages under the COVID‐19 threat. Consumers' motivation to lower their uncertainty underlies the effect of COVID‐19 threat on their evaluation of authentic messages (Study 3). This attempt to reduce uncertainty is more likely to occur for consumers with relatively higher childhood socioeconomic status (Studies 4 and 5). These findings suggest that using authenticity appeals during a pandemic could effectively reduce consumers' perceived uncertainty and generate positive consumer evaluations.

COVID-19 research in management: An updated bibliometric analysis

“… Yu et al, 2021 , Ninaus et al, 2021 , Torrès et al, 2021 . Emotional Responses(Yellow) Trust, Risk Perception, Perceived Threat, Collaboration, Chen et al, 2021 , Yost and Cheng, 2021 , Park et al, 2022 . Consumer Behaviors(Brown) Consumer Behavior, Accountability, Digital Transformation, Retailing.…”

The impact of socioeconomic status on preferences for sustainable luxury brands

“…As such, these findings also extend our understanding of the effect of COVID-19 on sustainable consumption. Despite other significant impacts reported for the COVID-19 pandemic (e.g., Li et al, 2021;Ozuem et al, 2021;Park, et al, 2022aPark, et al, , 2022b, empirical studies on its effect on consumption behavior are limited. Our results demonstrate that a high perceived threat of disease eliminates the impact of childhood socioeconomic status on sustainable consumption.…”

Saved by the past? Disease threat triggers nostalgic consumption

“…Also, when a threat of disease is salient, individuals tend to avoid outgroups since outgroup members are more likely to transfer pathogens to which in‐group members do not have immunity yet (Fessler et al, 2005) and they may be perceived as a possible source of contamination (Terrizzi et al, 2013). Besides the interpersonal context, a recent study by Park et al (2022) in the context of COVID‐19 demonstrated that a heightened disease threat motivates people to lower their uncertainty and leads to increased preferences for products with authenticity appeals. Furthermore, research has shown that disease threat is related not only to outgroup avoidance strategies but also to ingroup approach strategies, such as conformity (Murray et al, 2011; Wu & Chang, 2012).…”