Interesting Results
The Effects of Negative Information
What happens when consumers are exposed to negative information (bad publicity or negative comparisons to competitors)? The results of a 2000 study1 indicate that the answer depends on how easily the information can be refuted and how committed the consumers are.
The more committed a consumer is, the more likely it is that he or she will try to refute the information if that’s easy to do. If the information is difficult to refute, committed consumers tend to minimize the importance of the information so that it has little effect on their overall perceptions. Negative information has a much more detrimental impact on the views of those who are less committed.
1 Ahluwalia, Rohini (2000), “Examination of the Psychological Processes Underlying Resistance to Persuasion”, Journal of Consumer Research, 27(2), 217-232.