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This study aims to address the credibility effects of refutational versus non-refutational two-sided messages. Additionally, it aims to unravel the moderating role of issue ambivalence and argument type.

A 2 × 2 × 2 between-subjects factorial experimental design (N = 853 adolescents) investigates the effect of eight anti-binge drinking and anti-marijuana messages on source and message credibility.

The results show that refutation increases credibility compared to non-refutation. Additionally, a three-way interaction effect is found: credibility depends on the ambivalence of the issue and the argument type.

First, this study clarifies the inconsistencies found in previous literature regarding (non-)refutational two-sided messages by addressing two important (and so far neglected) moderating variables. Second, we provide useful new insights for health practitioners who develop campaigns to prevent drug abuse among adolescents.

The aim of this study is to contribute to previous research by investigating the principle of regulatory congruence in two-sided advertising messages. Additionally, it addresses the underlying mechanisms of the congruence effect.

The study encompasses two experiments: a two-level between-subjects design, manipulating the message’s frame (prevention vs promotion), while measuring respondents’ chronic self-regulatory focus (prevention vs promotion), and a 2 × 2 between-subjects design, manipulating processing depth (central vs peripheral) and message frame (prevention- vs promotion-oriented), while measuring individuals’ chronic self-regulatory focus (prevention vs promotion).

Study 1 shows that in two-sided messages, the effect of regulatory congruence on attitudes toward the message depends on individuals’ self-regulatory focus: a congruence effect was only found in promotion-focused individuals. This congruence effect was driven by processing fluency. The second study builds on the first one by exploring the absence of a congruence effect found in prevention-focused individuals. Its results show that in prevention-focused individuals, processing depth influences regulatory congruence effects in two-sided messages. Under peripheral processing, prevention-focused individuals have more positive attitudes toward the issue when two-sided messages are congruent with their self-regulatory focus. Under central processing, on the other hand, a regulatory incongruence effect on attitudes occurs.

This study complements prior research by examining the validity of the regulatory congruence principle in the context of two-sided messages. Moreover, it addresses the underlying mechanisms driving regulatory (in)congruence effects. As such, our study contributes both to the existing research on two-sided messages and that on regulatory focus.

The purpose of this research is to test the importance of the discounting attribute in the two-sided communication from a retail salesperson as a boundary condition that eliminates the trade-off between trustworthiness and purchase intentions.

The hypotheses are tested by three experimental studies in three different retail contexts. Two lab studies manipulate the importance of the attribute and the type of message: one-sided vs two-sided. A field study improves the external validity of the findings.

A two-sided message from a salesperson reduces the use of persuasion knowledge and, therefore, enhances the consumer’s perception of the salesperson’s trustworthiness; this positive effect remains significant across different levels of importance of the discounting attribute. A two-sided message decreases the consumer’s probability of purchase only when an important attribute is disclaimed, through the consumer’s beliefs regarding the product’s attributes.

For the appropriate use of two-sided appeals, retailers should identify the importance of product attributes from the consumers’ perspective. A negative remark from a salesperson when referred to an unimportant attribute makes no harm to purchase intentions while leading to stronger intentions to return to the store and to recommend the store by enhancing trustworthiness.

This paper shows that it is possible to enhance trustworthiness through a two-sided message without mitigating the intentions of buying by discounting an attribute at low importance in the two-sided message.

The purpose of this paper is to examine how consumer attitudes are affected by corporate brands that have newly adopted a sustainable brand image. Specifically, this paper examines consumer responses to ad–brand incongruity and tests whether two-sided messages yield greater acceptance of incongruence.

In total, 528 responses were collected via an online experiment using a 3×2 between-subjects factorial design which manipulated three levels of perceived ad–brand congruence (congruent, moderately incongruent and extremely incongruent) and two levels of message sidedness (one- and two-sided).

Results indicate that brand managers have to be careful not to create ad–brand incongruence after adopting new brand values and should avoid two-sided messages during this period.

This paper tests the use of two-sided messages as resolution hints for ad–brand incongruence and furthers the corporate branding literature incorporating sustainability.

The purpose of this paper is to examine multinational corporations’ (MNCs) response strategy in social media to effectively communicate their international CSR practices.

An experiment was conducted by adopting a case of an MNC’s globalized CSR campaign in United Arab Emirates. The interaction effects of corporate communication strategy and company’s response sidedness were examined as well as a mediating role of the perceived altruism.

The current study suggests how two-sided response strategy can be applied and benefits MNCs’ international CSR campaigns. The findings demonstrate that a company’s two-sided response helps to increase people’s attitude toward the company and word-of-mouth intention through enhanced perceived altruism when the company has no prior CSR experience in a host country.

The current study provides insights on how to respond to negative publicity in social media. MNCs are suggested to use different response strategies based on their prior CSR experience in a host country.

The success of CSR depends on how consumers take the message and perceive a company’s motive of CSR. The current study examines how to best respond to the consumers’ criticism by utilizing message sidedness strategies depending on the company’s presence of CSR.

Word‐of‐mouth is a powerful communication tool which is often beyond the control of the marketer. This study used a 3 x 2 x 2 factorial experiment in a laboratory simulation to examine the main and interaction effects of three independent variables — message, source and user‐type — on credibility and behavior intention. The experiment involved 1,440 respondents from two different demographic sample groupings — secondary school students and undergraduates. ANOVA results for the experiments showed that, generally, source and user‐type were found to be significant factors affecting the credibility of word‐of‐mouth. In terms of source, father was perceived to be more credible than close friend as a word‐of‐mouth source. Likewise, past users were found to be more credible than non‐past users. Message was, however, found to affect significantly the behavioral intention variable. Negative message was found to generate the strongest negative behavioral intention than positive message and two‐sided messages. Two‐sided message was also found to have a stronger effect than positive message in behavioral intention. In addition, t‐tests results also revealed significant differences in perceptions between the two samples.

This study aims to investigate how message sidedness affects the impact of fake news posted on social media on consumers' emotional responses.

The study involves a face-tracking experiment in which 198 participants were exposed to different fake news messages concerning the COVID-19 vaccine. Specifically, participants were exposed to fake news using (1) a one-sided negative fake news message in which the message was entirely unfavorable and (2) a two-sided fake news message in which the negative message was mixed with favorable information. Noldus FaceReader 7, an automatic facial expression recognition system, was used to recognize participants' emotions as they read fake news. The authors sampled 17,450 observations of participants' emotional responses.

The results provide evidence of the significant influence of message sidedness on consumers' emotional valence and arousal. Specifically, two-sided fake news positively influences emotional valence, while one-sided fake news positively influences emotional arousal.

The current study demonstrates that research on fake news posted on social media may particularly benefit from insights regarding the potential but often overlooked importance of strategic design choices in fake news messages and their impact on consumers' emotional responses.

This study aims to examine how the relative importance of a search versus a credence attribute, strategically addressed in a flu vaccination advertisement, varies as a function of message sidedness. A search attribute was designed to highlight the affordability of flu shots, and a credence attribute addressed the potential health benefits of flu vaccination.

Two experiments were designed to explore how the relative persuasiveness of search versus credence attributes varies as a function of message sidedness in the context of flu vaccination advertising. In Experiment 1, the search–credence attribute type was manipulated by addressing either the affordability (e.g. “Get free flu shots”) or indirect health benefits of flu vaccines (e.g. “Improve herd immunity/community health”). In Experiment 2, an individual-level credence attribute (e.g. “Strengthen your immune system”) was created and compared to the other two attribute conditions used in Experiment 1: a search versus a societal credence versus an individual credence attribute.

Experiment 1 (N = 114) revealed the relative advantage of a search attribute (free flu shots) in the two-sided persuasion. Experiment 2 (N = 193) indicated that the persuasive impact of a societal credence attribute (herd immunity/community health) was greater in the two-sided message condition (vs one-sided message condition).

Relatively little research has examined how consumers respond to strategic flu prevention and vaccination messages promoting either credence or search attributes. Motivated by the need to investigate the relative effectiveness of stressing “herd immunity” versus “free flu shots” in flu vaccination advertising, this study examines how the effects of these distinct attributes on flu vaccination judgments differ between two-sided (e.g. “No vaccine is 100% effective”) and one-sided persuasion.

This paper argues that communication is successful only if it overcomes each of six hurdles: reach, attention, understanding, belief, recall and action. The authors then map the saliency of ten academic disciplines: demographics and psychographics from marketing; persuasion and information processing from psychology; linguistics, writing and design from communication; and sociology, anthropology and economics from the social sciences. Effective practitioners must possess a basic understanding of the bodies of knowledge in all of these fields and be able to apply them in their everyday work. Thus, the intellectual breadth required of the public relations practitioner is extensive. Acquiring and maintaining sufficient knowledge of these and other fields should be the aim of a practitioner’s undergraduate and graduate education, and a career‐long programme of professional development. The “message to desired action” model updates and builds upon an earlier model, originally published in PR Reporter in 1992 and since cited in numerous public relations textbooks.

Online reviews are increasingly available for a wide range of products and services. Several studies have demonstrated the benefits of the presence of customer reviews to an online retailer, but the issue of what makes online reviews helpful to a consumer in the process of making a purchase decision remains uninvestigated. The paper aims to discuss this issue.

Given the strategic potential of online reviews, this study drew on past research to develop a conceptual understanding of the components of helpfulness and to further empirically test the model using actual online review data from iPeen.com in Taiwan. A content analysis of 989 reviews across four products identified the interplay effects of review sidedness, reviewer’s expertise, and product type on the helpfulness of an online review.

For search goods, consumers consider two-sided reviews to be more helpful than one-sided reviews when the reviewers are experts in writing such articles, whereas they consider two-sided reviews to be equally helpful as one-sided reviews when the reviewers are novices. Conversely, for experience goods, consumers consider one-sided reviews to be more helpful than two-sided reviews when the reviewers are experts in writing review articles, but they consider one-sided reviews to be equally helpful as two-sided reviews when the reviewers are novices.

With an understanding of how review sidedness affects online review helpfulness, online retailers could establish the policy for promoting the helpfulness of reviews more effectively.

This research yields at least three important contributions: first, it contributes to the message sidedness literature by showing which arguments (one- or two-sided) are deemed to be helpful; second, it contributes to the online peer review literature by demonstrating the importance of considering product type and heuristic cues (i.e. the reviewer’s expertise) when explaining helpfulness; and third, the results in this research demonstrate that people are drawn to dual-processing; that is, the judgment of online review helpfulness is determined by heuristic cues (e.g. the status of the reviewer) and systematic processing (e.g. review content).