The effects of single‐message single‐source mixed word‐of‐mouth on product attitude and purchase intention

Purpose – This study seeks to investigate how attitude towards and purchase intention of a product will be affected by involvement level and presentation order of positive and negative word‐of‐mouth (WOM) information when presented in a single‐message single‐source context. Design/methodology/approach – Two studies were conducted with undergraduates of a top Asian university with sample sizes of 221 and 253 using experimental setups. Findings – It was found that subjects tend to base their evaluations more on later information than earlier information regardless of involvement level. This recency effect was consistently found across the product categories of tourist destination and restaurant in both studies. Research limitations/implications – The main limitation is that the manipulation of involvement level might not have been strong enough. Despite obtaining differences between high and low involvement levels in the pretest for both products, the difference was found again in only the restaurant category in the manipulation check of both studies. Future research can increase the gap between high and low involvement levels using non‐laboratory settings to ensure effective involvement level manipulation. Practical implications – Findings of this paper can help companies to position messages in their favour when both positive and negative information needs to be presented. Originality/value – There has been a lot of marketing research on WOM but none has focused on covering positive and negative WOM coming from the same source despite it being a commonality in reality. This paper fills this gap with an investigation into the effects of single‐message single‐source mixed WOM on product attitude and purchase intention.