How Do Ambivalent Consumers Interpret Diversified Word-of-Mouth Information?

Abstract

Ambivalent attitude is a widespread phenomenon. However, it is seldom studied in the field of consumer behavior. Ambivalent consumers generally need extra input to reduce decision conflict. Widespread use of Internet facilitates consumers’ access to word-of-mouth of a mass of people. However, online word-of-mouth on a particular target is highly diversified and contains both positive and negative attitudes due to anonymity and freedom of the Internet. We explore how consumers with attitudinal ambivalence cope with external diversified word-of-mouth information.Recent research in marketing clarified that attitudinal ambivalence is characterized by subjective discomfort because its structure is inherently unstable. In line with cognitive dissonance theory, people may be motivated to resolve the conflicting evaluations they hold. Specifically, highly ambivalent consumers, holding high positive attitude and high negative attitude simultaneously, are motivated to reduce ambivalence-induced discomfort and uncertainty. Hence, they tend to selectively pay attention to the positive attitude, and change their attitudes accordingly. This is based on the idea that consumers have positive purchase intention and positive attitude is more capable of reducing ambivalence. On the other hand, less ambivalent consumers holding high positive attitude but low negative attitude, need to acknowledge potential post-buying risks rather than reduce ambivalence. In this regard, they tend to process the negative attitude and become affected by it because negative attitude remains as potential risk. Meanwhile, if what consumers selectively pay attention to is in accord with attitude consensus, the impact will be escalated, whereas if they are discordant, consumers will ignore the attitude consensus. Based on a pretest on 60 college students, we chose Windows 7 (an upcoming operating system of Microsoft Corporation at the time of the experiment) as the attitude target. Positive-biased and the negative-biased base-rate information were designed (representing inconsistent word-of-mouth) as stimulus. A 2*2 field experiment where extent of consumer ambivalence can be high and low, and bias of base-rate information can be positive and negative was conducted to examine the influence of the external inconsistent attitudes on consumers’ attitudes. One hundred and fifty two college students participated in the two-stage experiment in exchange for 10 RMB as token fee. We measured participants’ attitude ambivalence toward Windows 7 following Thompson et al., and computed their score of ambivalence using the Griffin function. Subsequently, the participants were classified into either high or low ambivalence group. After a period of two weeks, participants randomly read a positive-biased vs. negative-biased base-rate message toward Windows 7. The positive and negative attitudes were again reported. The results proved that the extent of consumers’ attitudinal ambivalence robustly moderated their selective attention to external conflicting attitudes and ruled out the mitigation effect of social consensus on selective attention when the two are in discord. In order to generalize the experiment results, we also recruited 90 college students to repeat a similar study with 3G cell phone product as the attitude target. The results prove that our earlier findings are robust. This paper may contribute to extant literature in several ways. Firstly, it elaborates on the coping strategy consumers employ to process external diversified information. Secondly, it implies that companies should tolerate a certain amount of negative word-of-mouth simultaneously presented with the dominant positive word-of-mouth. Moreover, it also suggests that marketers can employ consumer ambivalence as a segmentation factor and formulate corresponding communication approach.