Abstract
Negative information about products or companies that consumers encounter in the marketplace is not always certain and clear-cut. This dissertation explores how consumers’ regulatory focus orientation affects their response to negative information as a function of information ambiguity. We propose that under the situations where ambiguity is present in the negative information, only the prevention-focused consumers (but not the promotion-focused consumers) will be strongly persuaded and exhibit a large downward revision of their attitude toward the brand. In contrast, under the situations where the negative information is unambiguous, both promotion and prevention-focused consumers will be strongly persuaded and exhibit a large downward revision of their attitude toward the brand. Moreover, we argue that perceived diagnosticity of the information mediates the interaction effect of regulatory focus and information ambiguity on attitude revision. Specifically, when confronted with ambiguous negative information, prevention-focused consumers (vs. promotion-focused consumers) tend to overrate the perceived information diagnosticity, which, in turn, accentuates the impact of ambiguous negative information on judgment revision. Four experimental studies tested and confirmed these propositions in three different ambiguous scenarios: (1) when negative product information comes from a source with uncertain credibility (Study 1); (2) when the cause of a reported product failure is ambiguous (Study2), and (3) when product reviews are highly conflicting (Study 3a and Study 3b).