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The aim of this study is to assess the direct and indirect impact of the prominence dimensions of fit between a brand and a cause on consumer intentions to purchase cause-related products by considering cases with more versus less positive attitudes towards a brand and a higher versus lower social cause affinity.

The study is based on data obtained via a survey of 403 respondents in Lithuania. A between-subjects study design with different brands and causes was used to identify the role of the differences in brand attitude and cause affinity on the message strength.

The data analysis has revealed that the specific prominence dimensions of fit (relationship visibility, relationship explicitness, visuals/colours, local attributes) have a direct and indirect impact, via the message strength, on consumer intentions to purchase cause-related products. Additionally, the mediation of the message strength was dependent on attitudes towards a brand but not on cause affinity.

This is the first attempt to contribute to filling the research gap regarding the impact of the prominence dimensions of fit on the intention to purchase a cause-related product. Paying special attention to message strength mediation allowed for the assessment of both the direct and indirect effects of the individual dimensions of fit.

The primary question motivating this study is how message characteristics influence the persuasiveness of celebrity athlete endorsements as used in print advertising for a sports drink. In particular, this study examines the extent to which celebrity endorsement of a product influences the effectiveness of advertising under varying degrees of perceived fit between the celebrity and the product image. The findings indicate that the process of integrating endorsement strength with given endorsers and products can substantially enhance the effectiveness of celebrity advertising. It is found that the interactive effect of endorsement strength and celebrity-product match is more pronounced among consumers with high product involvement than among those with low involvement.

The purpose of this paper is to investigate the credibility assessment and adoption of electronic word-of-mouth on online social-networking sites, social word-of-mouth (sWOM), where the author writes product reviews on Facebook and hopes their Facebook friends will buy these products. The readers of the sWOM message are aware of the author’s commercial intentions. sWOM messages on search goods and experience goods are considered separately.

Author of sWOM messages invites their closed circle of Facebook friends to participate in a survey. The respondents are randomly assigned to read a product review of a search good (i.e. a laptop computer) or an experience good (i.e. a moisturizer cream (beauty product)). The partial least squares method is used to analyze the data from 339 returns (166 for the search good and 173 for the experience good).

The sWOM readers’ assessments of the messages’ credibility remain free from commercial influence. While the traditional factors of credibility and author-reader tie strength continue to influence the adoption of sWOM message, readers’ perceptions of the sWOM author’s marketing skills is also a factor. The relationships between the constructs depend on whether the products are search or experience goods.

Few studies investigate the type of sWOM considered here. Commercially influenced sWOM messages are effective since the author’s marketing skills, and other often-cited factors, affect the credibility and adoption of sWOM. Thus, the equality-matching (friendship) relationship and the market-pricing (sales) relationship can work hand-in-hand in the sWOM context.

This study aims to examine the effects interpersonal, service product and message factors has on positive and negative word of mouth's (WOM) influence. The study also sought to address the impact WOM had on changes in people's willingness to use a service provider.

A total of 495 consumers who had received positive WOM and 505 who had received negative WOM in the prior 12 months completed an online survey. The sample was recruited through a national online consumer panel provider.

Positive WOM was more effective and positive WOM messages had a greater effect on people's willingness to use a service than did negative WOM. Paradoxically, the strength of WOM and interpersonal factors had more impact on the influence of negative WOM, while brand equity enhanced positive WOM and acted as a buffer to negative WOM.

The study was conducted in a services context and may not necessarily be generalizable to product contexts. Further, the factors enhancing WOM in online contexts need to be examined, although the present model's constructs (e.g. homophily) are not equivalent in this context.

Different circumstances may enhance or detract from the influence of positive and negative WOM. Managers should maximise the verbal strength of positive WOM messages and generate positive brand equity perceptions, as this offers a buffer to negative WOM. Recommendations also include addressing customer education and socialisation to enhance WOM message influence.

The study extended prior WOM research by addressing interpersonal, service product and message factors, as well as the change in intended behaviour for positive and negative WOM.

Marketers recognize that the internet is crucial in the lives of consumers; thus, they invest money on online advertisements. Using multiple online media primarily influences the message acceptance of consumers. The synergistic effect of online multimedia relies on form, content, and sources of information, and time. The paper aims to discuss these issues.

A model that reflects the influence of the characteristics of online multimedia on message response through message acceptance is established based on theories of information persuasion, encoding variability, and multiple-source assumption. Based on a survey of 411 online media users, the study applies partial least-squares regression to test the research model.

The results show that variety of forms, complementary of contents, diversity of sources, and time interval influence message response via message strength. Complementary of contents and diversity of sources affect message response via perceived credibility. Synergy type moderates the relationship between variety of forms and perceived credibility and between diversity of sources and perceived credibility.

The current study mainly tests the effect of these characteristics on message response and the moderating effect of synergy type. Future research can examine the effect of these characteristics on information seeking and consumption behavior and the moderating effect of the cognitive mode of consumers.

This study provides insight into the characteristics of synergy and contributes to the literature on integrated marketing communication. The results provide guidance for practitioners to effectively plan online multimedia practices.

This study explored the influence of the characteristics of online media synergy on message response through message acceptance. The study also discussed the moderating effect of the type of online multimedia synergy.

The purpose of this paper is to investigate the consequences of jobseeker decision-making style on information search behaviour, information evaluation and perceptions of organisational attractiveness (OA). In this study, the authors assess whether, when presented with a realistic job information searching scenario of receiving basic job information from a typical formal short job advertisement, maximisers and satisficers differ on need for further information and evaluation of further information from informal information sources in relation to valence and tie strength.

A scenario-based experiment was conducted on 280 participants from the USA, with work experience in retail, using Amazon Mechanical Turk.

The results show that, compared to satisficers, significantly more maximisers chose to search for further information about the company/vacancy after receiving a typical short advertisement message. Furthermore, the results highlight the moderating effects of decision-making style (maximiser vs satisficer), tie strength (strong-tie vs weak-tie provider) and message valence (positive vs negative) on jobseekers’ perceived OA.

Companies seeking to increase their candidate pool should consider accommodating the different decision-making styles of jobseekers by carefully designing the content of recruitment information and utilising recruitment information sources. Although conducted in just one sector, the ubiquity of the maximiser/satisficer decision-making style implies further research to assess the implications for other sectors.

Research on decision-making style in recruitment is relatively limited. This study demonstrates the differences between maximisers and satisficers in terms of job-related information needs, and the evaluation of the source/content, when searching for a retail trade job.

The study discusses organic agricultural product persuasion using an empirical survey. This study argued that strong argument persuasive advertising message would trigger individuals' self-reference to the harm of pesticide residue in non-organic agricultural product, which would raise their purchase intention of organic agricultural product.

The present study conducted an empirical investigation in Taiwan by recruiting 527 Taiwanese participants using the convenience sampling procedure. The current research performed structural equation modeling analysis and used LISREL software to report the analytical results.

Individuals with health consciousness may perceive a high-level risk of non-organic agricultural product, which would raise individuals' fear perception to the harm of pesticide residue. Fear perception will increase individual's purchase intention of organic agricultural product. Results can help industry practitioners benefit from the results by enabling them to develop their advertising strategy for organic food.

Results can help industry practitioners benefit from the results by enabling them to develop their advertising strategy for organic food.

The purpose of this paper is to examine the role of independent vs interdependent self-construal in non-smokers’ responses to an anti-smoking message that focuses on either personal or relational consequences of smoking.

Two web-based experimental studies were conducted among US college non-smokers. In the first study, participants’ self-construal was measured. Then participants were randomly assigned to view an anti-smoking message emphasizing either relational or personal consequences of smoking. Message evaluation, smoking attitudes, and behavioral intentions were assessed after message exposure. The second study followed the same procedure except that participants’ self-construal was manipulated by randomly assigning participants to an independent or interdependent self-construal priming task prior to message exposure.

Both studies showed a noticeable pattern of interaction between message focus and self-construal: non-smokers with a salient interdependent self-construal responded more favorably to an anti-smoking message emphasizing personal (vs relational) consequences of smoking whereas non-smokers with a salient independent self-construal responded more favorably to an anti-smoking message emphasizing relational (vs personal) consequences of smoking. However, the interaction effect was small in the first study.

Findings from this study are original in that they run counter to the general belief that messages matching people’s self-perceptions will be more persuasive. On the other hand, matching health risk messages with people’s dominant self-construal may reduce the messages effectiveness due to defensive processing. As a result, communication practitioners should take a great caution of tailoring threatening smoking prevention messages to target audiences’ self-perceptions.

In the field of public relations and communication management, message evaluation has been one of the starting points for evaluation and measurement research at least since the 1970s. Reliable and valid message evaluation has a central role in message effects research and campaign design in other disciplines as well as communication science. The purpose of this paper is to offer a message testing protocol to efficiently acquire valid and reliable message evaluation data.

A message testing protocol is described in terms of how to conceptualize and evaluate the content and format of messages, in terms of procedures for acquiring and testing messages and in terms of using efficient, reliable and valid measures of perceived message effectiveness (PME) and perceived argument strength (PAS). The evidence supporting the reliability and validity of PME and PAS measures is reviewed.

The message testing protocol developed and reported is an efficient, reliable and valid approach for testing large numbers of messages.

Researchers’ ability to select candidate messages for subsequent deeper testing, for various types of communication campaigns, and for research in theory testing contexts is facilitated. Avoiding the limitations of using a single instance of a message to represent a category (also known as the case-category confound) is reduced.

Communication campaign designers are armed with tools to assess messages and campaign concepts quickly and efficiently, reducing pre-testing time and resources while identifying “best-in-show” examples and prototypes.

Message structures are conceptualized in terms of content and format features using theoretically driven constructs. Measures of PAS and PME are reviewed for their reliability, construct and predictive validity, finding that the measures are acceptable surrogates for actual effectiveness for a wide variety of messages and applications. Coupled with procedures that reduce confounding by randomly nesting messages within respondents and respondents to messages, the measures used and protocol deployed offer an efficient and utilitarian approach to message testing and modeling.

The purpose of this paper is to identify the best interactions between sales promotion and advertisement plans as the resources of the brand attachment and its consequences in durable and fast-moving consumer goods.

The mixed methods research in the form of qualitative approach, using a phenomenological method and quantitative approach, using three experimental studies of factorial design types and a structural equation modeling method, have been used in this research.

The fit of plans to achieve the brand attachment is similar in both product categories. The financial gift, with the ability of liquidity and variety of shopping, fits with the advertisement messages at a high construal level and high argument strength. However, the financial gift, with the ability of purchase from particular stores, fits with the advertisement messages at the low construal level and high argument strength. Moreover, in both product categories, the brand attachment leads to the emotional and cognitive consequences.

This research provides experimental support with actual experiences to create a fit in marketing communication plans in order to achieve a lasting and strong relationship. Therefore, this paper offers a valuable insight relating to financial gifts and advertisement messages and their effects on consumers’ behavior. It can also be used by other managers and researchers to assess their communication options.