The impact of COVID-19 on consumer evaluation of authentic advertising messages.
Jooyoung Park, Jungkeun Kim, Daniel C Lee, Seongseop S Kim, Benjamin G Voyer, Changju Kim, Billy Sung, Hector Gonzalez-Jimenez, Fernando Fastoso, Yung K Choi, Sukki Yoon
Author Information
Jooyoung Park: Peking University HSBC Business School Shenzhen Nanshan China.
Jungkeun Kim: Department of Marketing Auckland University of Technology Auckland New Zealand. ORCID
Daniel C Lee: Department of Marketing Auckland University of Technology Auckland New Zealand.
Seongseop S Kim: School of Hotel & Tourism Management The Hong Kong Polytechnic University Kowloon Hong Kong.
Benjamin G Voyer: Department of Entrepreneurship ESCP Business School-London Campus London UK.
Changju Kim: College of Business Administration Ritsumeikan University Ibaraki Osaka Japan.
Billy Sung: School of Marketing Curtin University Bentley Western Australia Australia. ORCID
Hector Gonzalez-Jimenez: Department of Marketing ESCP Business School-Madrid Campus Madrid Spain. ORCID
Fernando Fastoso: Business School Pforzheim University Pforzheim Germany.
Yung K Choi: Department of Advertising & PR Dongguk University Seoul Korea.
Sukki Yoon: College of Business Bryant University Smithfield Rhode Island USA.
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.
