Management Review ›› 2023, Vol. 35 ›› Issue (7): 162-173.

• Marketing • Previous Articles     Next Articles

“Highlighting Strengths while Downplaying Weaknesses” vs “Being Frank and Honest”? A Study on Information Push from the Perspective of Trust

Liao Yichen, Zhou Shuang, Wang Yuyu, Ao Mengqi, Wei Yuzhen   

  1. Economics and Management School of Wuhan University, Wuhan 430072
  • Received:2021-10-13 Online:2023-07-28 Published:2023-08-24

Abstract: Gaining customers' trust is the key to the success of accurate information push for enterprises. This paper explores how enterprises choose appropriate types of information to enhance customer's trust and purchase intention when product information is pushed to the new and old customers respectively. Based on three experiments, this paper finds that:for new customers, two-sided message can improve their purchase intention, and goodwill trust mediates this process; For old customers, one-sided message can improve their purchase intention, and competence trust mediates this process. Besides, this paper also finds the boundary effect of the rating of products. In particular, the interaction effect of this study is only applicable to those enterprises highly rated or without rating instead of those lowly rated. The research conclusion of this paper not only has practical guiding significance for enterprises to improve the effect of accurate advertising, but also helps to enrich the academic research on the field of one-sided and two-sided message and customer types.

Key words: customer type, one-sided message, two-sided message, goodwill trust, competence trust