Contrasting the Role of Ability and Morality in Online Consumer Impressions: An Extended Cue Diagnosticity Approach

Abstract

The ubiquitous nature of the Internet permits consumers to obtain a wide range of information about organisations through sources such as company websites and customer review pages. When acquiring different pieces of information about an organisation, consumers integrate and update their beliefs and form an overall impression about the organisation. This research employs a cue diagnosticity approach to examine the manner in which consumers form impressions about organisations based on trait and behaviour information. The cue diagnosticity approach primarily focuses on the concept that impression formation is a domain-dependent process in which ability and morality are the two central domains in which evaluative impressions are formed. Therefore, this research counterpoises organisational traits to determine whether the ability or morality domain is more dominant in determining evaluative impressions of organisations. Results from this study reveal that information related to the ability of an organisation is more influential in forming impressions of a company than equally extreme information related to its morality. This study further counterposes organisational traits with behaviours to determine which type of organisational behaviours exhibit more negative and more positive consumer brand attitudes. Results suggest that low ability behaviours result in more negative consumer brand attitudes than low morality behaviours, signifying the existence of a negativity bias in the ability domain. On the other hand, consumers did not substantially differentiate between high ability and high morality behaviours, signifying the absence of a positivity bias in both domains.