Emotive contents and heuristic cues regarding skeptical consumers

Abstract

This study clarifies consumers’ defense mechanisms and message elaboration to highlight the connection between consumer engagement with messages and brand success. Two eye-tracking experiments tested whether skepticism toward companies’ cause-related marketing (CRM) initiatives would lead to wide variations in how CRM ads influence consumers’ message elaboration. Informational appeals discouraged highly skeptical consumers’ message elaboration; thus, they process information through heuristic cues, such as “likes” and followers. However, negative emotional appeals led consumers to process information in a more accommodative and systematic manner. Moreover, the degree of message elaboration on heuristic cues (Study 1) and images (Study 2) has a crucial mediating role in the CRM appeal effect on credibility judgment. This study addresses the existing research gab by examining how dispositional CRM skepticism guides consumer message elaboration.