#Sponsored? An Investigation into the Antecedents and Consequences of Scepticism towards Brand Related User Generated Content

Abstract

User Generated Content (UGC) is being hailed as the “holy grail” of marketing due to its extensive influence on brand attitude and purchase intention. This study explores the darker side of UGC by empirically establishing the negative effects of consumer scepticism towards UGC and its antecedents. To address the research objectives the study used a sequential complementary research design consisting of an exploratory quantitative content analysis and two between-subject design experiments.

The exploratory content analysis narrowed down the content-related factors that could influence consumer scepticism that were identified in the literature. The resulting variables (media type, brand prominence, plot relevance and tone towards the brand) were further tested to establish the scepticism-mediated relationships between the identified antecedents, attitudinal (brand attitude, brand authenticity) and behavioural outcomes (purchase intention, information search intention, eWoM intention) through two between-subject design experiments: a 2x2 with brand centrality (high vs low) and UGC type (image vs text), and a 3 cell one with tone towards the brand (positive vs neutral vs negative) and goal seeking behaviour as a control variable, both experiments also highlighting humour as a moderator.

The main findings indicated that 1) centrally placed brands elicit more scepticism; 2) content with a positive tone towards the brand causes a decrease in scepticism; 3) text UGC is subject to more scepticism than images. Additionally, the findings of the first experiment indicate that humour is a moderator between content characteristics and scepticism, while the second experiment found high levels of humour led to a decrease in scepticism. Most importantly, consumer scepticism has a negative impact on all the examined outcome variables.

The study recognises a sophistication in consumer information processing by applying scepticism as a different lens to the effectiveness of UGC and makes important contributions to UGC literature. The study contributes to knowledge on UGC effectiveness by considering the impact of content-related and consumer-related factors. It is seminal in establishing a causal relationship between consumer scepticism towards UGC and key marketing outcomes.

The study provides important insights for brands allowing them to more effectively use UGC. The results indicate that brands should encourage positive reviews to increase purchase intention. Further, when collaborating with influencers or launching UGC campaigns they could consider less centrally placed brand inclusions to reduce consumer scepticism. Further, it provides a basis for evaluating the impact of UGC that consumers are sceptical towards which can contribute to brand social listening efforts.

Date of Award	2020
Original language	English
Awarding Institution	Coventry University
Supervisor	Anvita Kumar (Supervisor), Nigel Berkeley (Supervisor), Yue Meng-Lewis (Supervisor) & Hongfei Liu (Supervisor)