Asia Pacific Journal of Marketing and Logistics

Word-of-mouth: The use of source expertise in the evaluation of familiar and unfamiliar
brands
Boon Chong Lim Cindy M.Y. Chung

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Word-of-mouth
The use of source expertise
in the evaluation of familiar and unfamiliar
brands
Boon Chong Lim

Downloaded by Universiti Utara Malaysia At 00:16 11 December 2015 (PT)

Division of Marketing and International Business,

Nanyang Business School, Nanyang Technological University,
Singapore, and

Word-of-mouth

39
Received 10 February 2013
Revised 29 August 2013
Accepted 20 September
2013

Cindy M.Y. Chung

Faculty of Economics and Business Administration,
Marketing Department Goethe-Universitat, Frankfurt, Germany
Abstract
Purpose This research was designed to expand the understanding of how brand familiarity may
affect the motivation to process word-of-mouth (WOM) information in brand evaluation. The
pre-WOM brand attitude certainty is expected to explain the moderation effect. The paper aims to
discuss these issues.
Design/methodology/approach Two experiments were conducted. The study participants were
undergraduate students from a major university in Singapore. The main statistical analysis was done
using a two-way analysis of covariance.
Findings The results of Experiments 1 and 2 support the prediction that consumers are more likely
to use the perceived expertise of the WOM sender to evaluate an unfamiliar brand vs a familiar brand.
Experiment 2 also provides some preliminary evidence that this interaction effect may be due to the
difference in certainty of the study respondents in regards to the pre-WOM evaluation of unfamiliar
and familiar brand.
Research limitations/implications This manipulation method of presenting WOM in a printed
format may understate the impact of WOM. A more vivid manipulation of WOM that allows for a
feedback loop may be considered for future research.
Practical implications The results highlight the importance of considering the strength
dimensions of brand attitudes (e.g. attitude certainty) in the marketplace. For marketers of unfamiliar
brands, source factors (e.g. expertise of WOM sender) are important to consider for effective use of
WOM to market their products. For familiar brands, source factors are less relevant.
Originality/value This paper highlights the importance of considering attitude certainty and the
subsequent malleability of attitude toward new information about the brand in the marketplace.
Hence, marketers and researchers who are interested in changing brand attitude should take
meta-attitude factors into consideration.
Keywords Consumer behaviour, Word of mouth marketing
Paper type Research paper

The authors thank Ringo Ho, Shun Yin Lam, and Sharon Ng, and participants in the 2010 GFA
Marketing Conference for their valuable feedback on this research.

Asia Pacific Journal of Marketing and

Logistics
Vol. 26 No. 1, 2014
pp. 39-53
q Emerald Group Publishing Limited
1355-5855
DOI 10.1108/APJML-02-2013-0027

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1. Introduction
Word-of-mouth (WOM) is an informal mode of communication about the evaluation of
goods and services between consumers who are independent of the marketers
(Anderson, 1998; Arndt, 1967; Dichter, 1966; Wee et al., 1995). In the marketplace,
WOM plays an important role in shaping consumers attitudes and behaviors (Brown
and Reingen, 1987). Consumers search for information from other consumers to make
more informed decisions (Berger, 1988; Jolson and Bushman, 1978). Relevant others
(e.g. friends and relatives) can provide information that supports and/or adds to what
the consumers already know about the products and services (Deutsch and Gerard,
1955; Lim and Chung, 2011).
The extent to which information from others affects the individuals evaluation of
objects depends on whether the individual perceives information about the product or
service from others to be credible or not (Burnkrant and Cousineau, 1975). The
expertise of the source is one of the more important and enduring components of source
credibility (Yoon et al., 1998). Since the impact of WOM is contingent on whether
consumers view WOM messages as credible, the perceived expertise of WOM sender is
likely to be an important factor in the study of WOM. Even though the WOM sender is
likely to be trustworthy and does not have any ulterior motive to provide the WOM
(Bansal and Voyer, 2000; Smith et al., 2005), he/she may not have the expertise to
provide valid information about the object in question. Thus, how the perceived
expertise of WOM sender can influence the impact of the WOM on the evaluation of
brands is an important consideration. However, the motivation to use the additional
information from the WOM sender (including the senders characteristics) may be
dependent on the characteristics of the focal brand. The impact of brand information
on subsequent information processing is expected to be moderated by the consumers
familiarity with the brand. Past research has extensively looked into how product
familiarity (i.e. prior knowledge of the product category) (Rao and Monroe, 1988) can
influence cue utilization due to the consumers ability to process additional information.
However, brand familiarity does not necessarily lead to better-developed knowledge
structures (i.e. schemas) about a product category. Today, many marketers use brand
extensions across numerous product categories to leverage on their strong brands
leading to greater awareness. Brand familiarity can also arise from marketing
communication that focuses on raising brand awareness and reasons for buying the
focal brand, but consumers may not gain much product knowledge from commercial
messages. Therefore, brand familiarity, as opposed to product familiarity, may affect
the processing of additional information in a different way.
This research examines how brand familiarity can affect the motivation of the
consumers to use the expertise heuristic (e.g. consumers who are experts can be trusted
to give an accurate reflection of brand quality) in a WOM exchange context. This paper
examines this expected moderation by delineating the meta-attitude factors
(e.g. attitude certainty) of consumers in this context. This paper highlights the
importance of considering attitude certainty and the subsequent malleability of
attitude toward familiar or unfamiliar brand to new information in the marketplace.
The results of the two experiments in this research support this prediction.
Experiment 2 also provides some preliminary evidence that the moderation effect of
brand familiarity on the use of the source expertise as cue may be driven by the
certainty the study participants have about their pre-WOM evaluation of a familiar

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brand versus an unfamiliar brand. The conceptual and marketing implications of the
results are discussed in the concluding section of this paper.
2. Conceptual background and hypothesis development
2.1 Attitude certainty and brand familiarity
Brand name information can be considered a knowledge structure that can operate as a
judgment heuristic. The knowledge structure may include associations between a
brand name and the quality of the product and therefore provide a basis for a judgment
or a decision without the need for extensive processing of internal cues (i.e. specific
information about product attributes) (Campbell et al., 2003; Maheswaran et al., 1992).
In contrast to heuristics that provide information about message validity, brand name
provides information about the attitude object itself (i.e. quality of the product) rather
than the position that the persuasive message advocates. Consumers often use price or
brand information in making judgments about products, and this attention to brand
and price information may inhibit the use of later (potentially more diagnostic)
information in judging a products quality (Oxoby and Finnigan, 2007). However,
attitude certainty is likely to affect the use of brand name as a judgment heuristic by
the consumers.
Recent research on persuasion and resistance of persuasion has looked beyond just
attitude and focused on the impact of attitude strength, such as attitude certainty
(Barden and Petty, 2008; Pullig et al., 2006; Tormala et al., 2006). Attitude certainty is
one of the most studied indicators of attitude strength (Barden and Petty, 2008).
Attitude certainty reflects the consumers subjective sense of confidence in their attitude
or the extent to which the consumers believe that their attitude is correct (Gross et al.,
1995; Tormala and Petty, 2002). Attitudes that consumers are certain about tend to be
stronger than attitudes about which they have doubts. Attitude certainty can affect the
resistance to subsequent persuasive attacks (Tormala and Petty, 2002; Visser and
Mirabile, 2004), persistence of attitudes over time (Barden and Petty, 2008; Gross et al.,
1995), and attitude-behavioral correspondence (Fazio and Zanna, 1978; Haddock et al.,
1999; Tormala et al., 2006).
Brand familiarity is a factor that may affect brand attitude certainty. Brand
familiarity can be defined as the reflection of the direct and indirect brand-related
experiences that a consumer has accumulated over time (Alba and Hutchinson, 1987).
Most real product categories contain well-established familiar brands and new
unfamiliar brands (Coates et al., 2006). Even though consumers may evaluate familiar
brands better against unfamiliar brands (Arora and Stoner, 1996; Sundaram and
Webter, 1999), it may be due to the fact that better known brands (usually brand
leaders in the category) have a higher brand appeal in the first place (Coates et al.,
2006). Familiar brands tend to be the big brands in the market (e.g. market leaders) that
survived the competitive market by providing good value to the consumers. Unfamiliar
brands are typical new brands that are unproven yet. Hence, brand familiarity is often
confounded with brand appeal.
The main contention of this research is that brand familiarity can influence brand
evaluation beyond just having a higher brand appeal. DeCarlo et al. (2007) examined
how brand familiarity can interact with brand image/appeal to influence the kind of
attributions consumers may make about negative WOM (i.e. to the WOM sender or to
the brand) and in turn influence brand evaluation (in the context of a retail store).

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This current research aims to examine how brand familiarity can interact with the
characteristics of the WOM sender (i.e. expertise of WOM sender) to influence the
consumers brand evaluation. The impact of brand familiarity is expected to be
mediated by the consumers attitude certainty (instead of attribution).
For familiar brands, consumers may have had prior experience using the brands,
seen the advertising or marketing communications for the brands, gotten WOM from
friends and family who have used the brands before, and received information from the
news media. Hence, consumers are likely to be highly certain of their evaluation of the
familiar brands. In contrast, consumers lack certainty about their evaluation of
unfamiliar brands due to the lack of information on and experience with these brands.
Moreover, this higher uncertainty for unfamiliar (versus familiar) brands is likely to
lead to higher motivation to process information beyond the brand name (Friestad and
Wright, 1994; Wei et al., 2008).
2.2 Expertise of WOM source
People tend to be economy-minded who engaged in effortful information processing
only when they deem it necessary (Eagly and Chaiken, 1993). Priester and Petty (1995)
found that attitudes of cognitive misers are more dependent on message scrutiny when
a knowledgeable source is of questionable honesty than when the honesty of the source
is clear. Given that the WOM recipient generally perceives the WOM sender to be
independent of the marketers, the manipulative intent of the WOM sender is most
likely less accessible and salient as compared to sources that are not independent of the
marketers (e.g. celebrity spokesperson, salesperson) (Bansal and Voyer, 2000;
Smith et al., 2005). Therefore, the WOM recipient is likely to rely on heuristic
processing (e.g. use of source expertise) when evaluating the WOM message.
Trustworthiness and expertise are two of the more important and enduring
components of source credibility (Yoon et al., 1998). Trustworthiness refers to the
perceived willingness of the source to make valid assertions (Yoon et al., 1998). In
general, the WOM recipient perceives the WOM sender to be trustworthy, because the
WOM sender is usually independent of the seller and is not trying to persuade the
WOM recipient to act in some way that is detrimental to his or her interests (Bansal
and Voyer, 2000; Smith et al., 2005). Thus, the WOM recipient is unlikely to be too
concerned about the trustworthiness of the WOM sender.
Source expertise refers to the perceived ability of a source to make valid assertions
about the issues at hand by the virtue of having relevant skills or knowledge (Homer
and Kahle, 1990; Yoon et al., 1998). The perceived expertise level of the WOM sender
can assert a substantial influence on the perceived credibility of the WOM sender
(Swartz, 1984; Yoon et al., 1998). As judgments based on the expertise of the source are
generally perceived to be appropriate (Bohner et al., 2002), consumers are likely to use
the source expertise to evaluate the validity of the product evaluations that other
consumers provide (Friestad and Wright, 1994; Maheswaran et al., 1992).
2.3 Hypotheses
In general, a message from an expert (as opposed to a non-expert) tends to be more
persuasive for the consumers because a high level of perceived expertise indicates that
the message being delivered is a valid one (Homer and Kahle, 1990). When using source
expertise as an evaluation basis, a consumer may choose to agree with the advocated

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position of the expert without considering the merits of the persuasive argument.
As experts are perceived to possess knowledge about the product being evaluated and
capable of making correct assertions about the product, the level of perceived expertise
of the source provides evidence of the message validity (Homer and Kahle, 1990).
However, past research has shown that the impact of the expertise of the source on
persuasion can be moderated by various factors (Bohner et al., 2002; Petty et al., 1981).
An individual will attempt to strike a balance between minimizing cognitive effort
expended and maximizing his or her confidence about a judgment (Chaiken et al.,
1989). Hence, a consumer is more likely to process additional information when his or
her confidence in judgment is low (Zuckerman and Chaiken, 1998).
For unfamiliar brands, the consumers brand attitude certainty is low and the
consumers are more inclined to process additional information including the source
expertise. Hence, the consumers may rely on the source expertise as a basis of
evaluation for an unfamiliar brand. Conversely, consumers are more certain about their
brand attitude toward familiar brands and are less inclined to process any additional
information about the brand. Therefore, the use of source expertise is expected to be
limited for a familiar brand. In the context of positive WOM communication, the
following relationship is expected:
H1. Perceived high (versus low) expertise of WOM sender will lead to a more
positive brand attitude.
H2. Brand familiarity moderates the impact of WOM senders expertise on brand
attitude. Specifically, perceived high (versus low) expertise of WOM sender
will lead to a more positive attitude toward an unfamiliar brand. However,
perceived expertise of WOM sender has little or no impact on attitude toward
a familiar brand.
3. The present research
3.1 Overview of design and participants
Brand familiarity (familiar versus unfamiliar), and expertise of WOM sender (high
versus low) were manipulated between-subjects to test the hypotheses in two
experiments. The study participants were undergraduate students from a major
university in Singapore. Experiment 1 had 50 study participants and Experiment 2 had
78 study participants. In both experiments, study participants were given course
credits for their participation. The printer product category was pretested to be
relevant to the undergraduates and the brand extension of two brands to the printer
product category was chosen as the context of both experiments.
3.2 Experiment 1
3.2.1 Procedure and measurements. Two pretests were conducted. The first pretest
identified a familiar brand and an unfamiliar brand, confirmed the effectiveness of the
expertise manipulation, and identified important product attributes to use in the WOM
message. The second pretest confirmed that the argument strength and/or
comprehension of the WOM message did not affect the expertise manipulation.
In the first pretest, brand names from a single product category were rated on two
dimensions: brand familiarity and brand appeal (Coates et al., 2006). The two chosen
brand names should differ only on brand familiarity. The context of the pretest and

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subsequent experiment is the brand extension of the familiar and unfamiliar brand into
a new but related product category (i.e. printer product category). Twenty-one
participants did the pretest. In this pretest, the participants rated 17 brands of personal
computer (PC) that are available in the Singapore market. Based on the comparison of
the ratings across the different brands, two brands were chosen. On a seven-point scale
of very unfamiliar (1) to very familiar (7), they rated Acer (M 5.9) to be significantly
more familiar than BenQ (M 4.6) ( p , 0.01). On the other hand, Acer (M 4.6) is not
significantly different ( p . 0.50) from that of BenQ (M 4.4) on a seven-point scale of
very unappealing (1) to very appealing (7). Hence, Acer (i.e. familiar brand) and BenQ
(i.e. unfamiliar brand) were chosen. Both brands are PC manufacturers that are already
in several related product categories.
Perceived expertise of the WOM sender was manipulated by varying the WOM
senders experience with the product category (i.e. number of purchases made) and the
WOM senders formal training and occupation (i.e. related or unrelated to the product
category) (Alba and Hutchinson, 1987; Feick and Higie, 1992) in the WOM scenario for
the subsequent experiment. It was then measured using two items (i.e. ability of WOM
sender to evaluate the quality of the printer, and ability of WOM sender to give
accurate information about the various attributes of printers) from very low (1) to very
high (7) on a seven-point scale.
The top three most important attributes (i.e. color printing, price of printer, price of
replacement toner and cartridge) were also identified. On a seven-point scale from very
unimportant (1) to very important (7), the mean importance scores range from 6.3 to 6.5
for the three most important attributes. These three attributes were used in the WOM
message for the experiment.
As comprehension of the message can moderate the impact of source cues
(Ratneshwar and Chaiken, 1991), technical details/jargons were limited to a minimum to
ensure the study participants would be able to understand the message. Moreover,
consumers who use the expert heuristic may expect an experts message (as opposed to
a novices message) to consist of convincing arguments (Bohner et al., 2002). Consumers
may also expect experts to deliver messages with strong arguments (e.g. detailed and
quantitative information) and non-experts to deliver messages with weak arguments
(e.g. own verbal evaluations) (Artz and Tybout, 1999). The manipulation for WOM
senders expertise worked as expected ( p , 0.01), suggesting that the wording of the
arguments presented in the WOM message were suitable.
In the main experiment, the study participants were randomly assigned to one of the
four conditions in a laboratory setting. The study participants were asked to rate the
brand assigned to them (Acer or BenQ) using three seven-point semantic differential
scales with the following anchors: very negative (1) very positive (7), very
unfavorable (1) very favorable (7), and very bad (1) very good (7) (a 0.94). These
three items were averaged to form the pre-WOM attitude rating. The simple rating task
was followed by two short filler tasks to clear short-term memory. After the filler tasks,
the study participants were asked to imagine that they were considering buying a
printer (from either of the assigned brands) and decided to ask a friend, Chris, for a
recommendation. This WOM scenario included the manipulation of WOM senders
expertise (i.e. stated how many printers Chris had bought before and Chris
background in terms of formal training and occupation). The following is an example
of the WOM message used (brand name depended on condition assigned):

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Even though [Acer/BenQ ] printers are new to the Singapore market, you should consider
getting a [Acer/BenQ ] printer. All of the printer models for [Acer/BenQ ] have colour printing.
This will probably be useful for you to print coloured graphics and photos for your school
reports. The price of a [Acer/BenQ ] printer is also very affordable with the student discount
that you can get. The replacement cartridges and toners for [Acer/BenQ ] printers are also very
cheap. You will not have to worry about how expensive it is to print each and every page.

Word-of-mouth

The study participants were then asked to rate the brand again with the same three
scales used in the first rating task. These three items were averaged to form the
post-WOM attitude rating of interest (a 0.92). In the last section, the study
participants filled out other items relating to the WOM scenario, covariates (e.g. source
likeability and involvement with the task of evaluating the brand), and manipulation
checks (the same items used in the pretests). The experimenter then thanked and
dismissed the study participants.
3.2.2 Results and discussion. The analysis on the manipulation checks indicates that
the manipulation for brand familiarity worked as expected. Familiarity for Acer
(M 4.6) is significantly greater than familiarity for BenQ (M 3.4) (F(1, 46) 17.17,
p , 0.05). On the other hand, the study participants did not rate Acer (M 3.8) and
BenQ (M 3.7) differently on appeal (F(1, 46) 0.07, p . 0.75). In addition, the
expertise manipulation works with the study participants perceiving WOM sender of
high expertise (M 4.9) to have higher ability than WOM sender of low expertise
(M 4.3) (F(1, 46) 5.23, p , 0.05).
The main analysis was done using a two-way analysis of covariance (ANCOVA),
with the post-WOM attitude rating as the dependent variable. Pre-WOM attitude rating
and likeability of WOM sender were included as covariates. A closer examination of the
item measuring source likeability shows a marginally significant interaction between
brand familiarity and expertise (F(1, 46) 3.55, p . 0.05). The potential confounding
effect from source likeability was taken into consideration in Experiment 2.
The main effect of expertise of WOM sender is not significant (F(1, 44) 1.83,
p . 0.10). The main effect of brand familiarity is also not significant (F(1, 44) 0.93,
p . 0.30). The expected interaction effect between brand familiarity and expertise is
significant (F(1, 44) 4.19, p , 0.05), supporting the hypothesis that familiarity of the
brand moderates the use of expertise of WOM sender for brand evaluation. As the
relationships seemed to differ across the two levels of familiarity, additional post hoc
analyses were done to examine the simple effects at each level. The Bonferroni
procedure was used to adjust for the two comparisons made, with the overall error rate
at 0.05. For Acer, the familiar brand, the difference in brand attitude between high
expertise and low expertise is not significant (F(1, 44) 0.26, p . 0.60) (Table I).

45

Familiar brand
High expertise (n 12)
Low expertise (n 13)
Unfamiliar brand
High expertise (n 12)
Low expertise (n 13)

Pre-WOM attitude
mean score (SD)

Post-WOM attitude
mean score (SD)

3.92 (1.02)
4.13 (1.01)

4.39 (1.17)
4.57 (0.95)

3.72 (0.81)
3.85 (1.14)

5.12 (0.82)
4.30 (1.05)

Table I.
Pre-WOM and
post-WOM attitude
rating (Experiment 1)

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For BenQ, the unfamiliar brand, brand attitude from high expertise is significant
higher than that from low expertise (Table I) (F(1, 44) 5.61, p , 0.025). Therefore, the
moderation effect (H2) is supported.
3.3 Experiment 2
3.3.1 Procedure and measurements. The procedure for this experiment was similar to
that of Experiment 1, except with a few changes to address certain issues in
Experiment 1. The study participants were asked to rate their confidence level of their
pre-WOM rating of the assigned brand by using a seven-point scale from very
unconfident (1) to very confident (7). The study participants were also asked to rate
their desired confidence on a seven-point scale from very unconfident (1) to very
confident (7). These measures can help lend support to the argument that the predicted
interaction effect is driven by the difference in actual confidence between familiar and
unfamiliar brands.
To increase the study participants level of involvement with the evaluation task,
they were also asked to imagine in the WOM scenario that they are purchasing the
printer for the use of their upcoming school projects and assignments. The
manipulation of the expertise of WOM sender was also changed. The study
participants were asked to think of a friend or relative who was very likely to be an
expert (or non-expert) in the product category of printers as part of the WOM scenario.
The change in the manipulation method ensures that the findings are robust across
different manipulation methods. Other factors, besides expertise of the WOM sender),
might have been changed due to the initial manipulation in Experiment 1. This
manipulation of expertise did not affect source likeability in the pretest stage. However,
source likeability may still differ in the experiment. Hence, source likeability was still
measured to check for its possible impact on the expertise manipulation. Moreover,
consumers with high expertise and consumers with low expertise may also differ in
terms of tie strength with the study participants (Constant et al., 1996). As tie strength
can have an influence on the impact of WOM (Brown and Reingen, 1987), tie strength
was measured using four items (a 0.96) pertaining to the study participants
perception of their supportiveness, closeness (two items), and association with the
WOM sender. Study participants also rated their own knowledge about printers on a
seven-point scale from very unknowledgeable (1) to very knowledgeable (7).
3.3.2 Results and discussion. Analyses on the manipulation checks indicate that the
manipulations worked as expected. The study participants rated Acer (M 5.0) to be
significantly more familiar than BenQ (M 4.0) (F(1, 74) 8.19, p , 0.01). On the
other hand, the study participants did not rate Acer (M 4.1) as different from BenQ
(M 3.9) (F(1, 74) 0.39, p . 0.50) in appeal. In addition, the study participants
perceived the high-expertise WOM sender to have greater ability (M 5.4) in regards
to the printer category than the low-expertise WOM sender (M 3.5) (F(1, 74) 55.92,
p , 0.01). Source likeability did not differ across conditions, indicating a lack of effect
on the dependent variable.
A two-way ANCOVA on post-WOM rating of the brand, with pre-WOM rating of
the brand as a covariate, was conducted. The inclusion of other covariates such as tie
strength and source likeability did not change the significant level of the tested effects.
Due to the ease of interpretation and the need of brevity, only the results of the
ANCOVA with pre-WOM ratings of the brand as a covariate are reported.

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The familiarity main effect is not significant (F(1, 73) 2.29, p . 0.10). The
expertise main effect is marginally significant (F(1, 73) 3.57, p , 0.10). The expected
interaction effect between brand familiarity and expertise is significant (F(1, 73) 4.16,
p , 0.05). As with Experiment 1, post hoc analyses were run to examine these
relationships at each level of familiarity, adjusting for the two comparisons using the
Bonferroni procedure. Under familiar brand, brand attitudes from high expertise and
low expertise were not statistically different (Table II) (F(1, 73) 0.01, p . 0.90).
Under unfamiliar brand, brand attitude from high expertise is significant higher than
that from low expertise (Table II) (F(1, 73) 7.93, p , 0.01). Therefore, the expected
interaction effect (H2) is supported by the results in Experiment 2.
Additional analysis on attitude certainty was done to give an insight into what
might have driven the results. The study participants were significantly more
confident in their rating of the familiar brand (M 4.5) than the unfamiliar brand
(M 3.9) (F(1, 74) 4.20, p , 0.05). These results do suggest that the attitude
certainty differ across unfamiliar and familiar brands. As attitude certainty was
measured using a single item and lacking in reliability, no additional mediated
moderation analysis was conducted.

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4. General discussion
A key conceptual contribution of this paper is to demonstrate how brand familiarity
can moderate the use of source cues (i.e. expertise of the WOM sender) in the
context of interpersonal consumer communication about product evaluation. Even
though past research has looked at how brand can affect the processing of later
information (Oxoby and Finnigan, 2007), this research contributes by demonstrating
that this effect may be moderated by brand familiarity. The results from both
experiments suggest that consumers may rely on the expertise of the WOM sender
to evaluate unfamiliar brands, but not for familiar brands. The results are not likely
to be driven by an overly positive evaluation of the familiar brand compared to the
unfamiliar brand, as the study participants did not rate the familiar brand
significantly higher than the unfamiliar brand in terms of pre-WOM attitude and
appeal of brand.
Experiment 2 also provides some preliminary support that this phenomenon may be
due to the difference between the attitude certainty toward the familiar and unfamiliar
brand. The results of these two experiments illustrate the importance of considering
consumers brand attitude certainty in predicting attitude change. This research
contributes to the recent stream of literature exploring how attitude certainty can

Familiar brand
High expertise (n 19)
Low expertise (n 19)
Unfamiliar brand
High expertise (n 20)
Low expertise (n 20)

Pre-WOM attitude
mean score (SD)

Post-WOM attitude
mean score (SD)

3.96 (1.04)
4.11 (1.21)

4.78 (0.90)
4.81 (0.74)

4.12 (1.03)
4.07 (0.96)

4.86 (0.69)
4.30 (0.85)

Table II.
Pre-WOM and
post-WOM attitude
rating (Experiment 2)

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influence persuasion (Barden and Petty, 2008; Pullig et al., 2006; Tormala et al., 2006).
Moreover, this paper focuses on peer-to-peer persuasion rather than company
sponsored persuasive messages. Even though WOM messages are typically
considered to be from trustworthy sources (Bansal and Voyer, 2000; Smith et al.,
2005), consumers are unlikely to take a WOM message of an unfamiliar brand
(i.e. uncertain brand attitude) at face value. Other factors (e.g. amount of elaboration)
that influence brand attitude certainty may generate the same interaction effect.
Both non-academic and academic researchers ought to consider how the differences
in attitude certainty and other measures of attitude strength can influence their studies
about attitude changes. The brands used for some consumer behavior experiments
may be unknown/unfamiliar to the subjects. The use of familiar brands can
inadvertently affect the conclusions drawn in some of these experiments and the extent
to which the results of the experiments can be generalized. For example, Kirmani and
Shiv (1998) found that source congruity enhances attitudes under conditions of high
issue-relevant elaboration by using of hypothetical brands in their experiments.
Kirmani and Shiv (1998) manipulated source congruity by matching a certain endorser
to the positioning of these hypothetical brands. However, brand familiarity may
moderate the impact of source congruity. Source congruity may not enhance the brand
attitudes toward familiar brands from their current levels, as the consumers may not
elaborate on the information even in conditions of high issue-relevant elaboration due
to their attitude certainty toward familiar brands.
Sundaram and Webter (1999) found that unfamiliar brand has more to gain from
positive WOM in terms of brand evaluations (i.e. purchase intentions and brand
attitudes). The relationship does not hold in this study. The expertise of the WOM
sender was not manipulated in Sundaram and Webters experiment. In the two
experiments here, the lower receptiveness of WOM about an unfamiliar brand sent by
WOM sender with low expertise is likely to contribute to the insignificant main effect.
The results in this study show that consumers may not indiscriminately use positive
WOM to bolster their brand evaluations of unfamiliar brands.
Marketers may use brand extensions in order to build and communicate strong
brand positioning, increase the probability of trial by lessening new product risk for
consumers, and enhance awareness and quality associations. Although the direct
impact of the parent brand on the evaluation of brand extensions is the focus of most
existing brand extension studies (Sjodin, 2008), the evaluations of brand extensions do
not occur in a vacuum of information from other sources. Hence, this research can help
in the understanding of how consumers can be affected by additional information in
the marketplace (WOM in this case) in their evaluation of new brand extensions. Also,
the current research suggests whether consumers use information from additional
sources depends on the consumers actual confidence in their evaluation of new brand
extensions.
This research has implications for marketers who use WOM as a form of marketing.
The results highlight the importance of considering the strength dimensions of brand
attitudes (e.g. attitude certainty) in the marketplace. Given the preliminary findings in
Experiment 2, promotion efforts that potentially influence brand familiarity
(e.g. frequency of the advertisements) (Alba and Hutchinson, 1987) may conceivably
affect brand attitude certainty. For marketers of unfamiliar brands, source factors
(e.g. expertise and likeability of WOM sender) are important to consider for effective

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use of WOM to market their products. Hence, the use of opinion leaders, presumably
respected for their opinions in certain product categories, is crucial for unfamiliar
brands when adopting WOM marketing. However, most opinion leaders are
potentially online bloggers and the dynamics could be very different. For our
findings to be generalizable to the online context, future research needs to take the
differences between the offline and online context into consideration. For familiar
brands, source factors are less relevant. When the marketers of familiar brands engage
in WOM marketing, they do not need to be as discriminating in choosing the WOM
sources. Whether the WOM sources are perceived experts or not by the consumers, the
difference in influence is negligible.
5. Limitations and future directions
In the two experiments, the WOM messages were presented in a pallid manner to the
study participants. This manipulation method of presenting WOM in a printed format
may understate the impact of WOM. In addition, the experiments do not provide the
study participants with any opportunities for clarification and immediate feedback, a
major benefit of using WOM. Moreover, the two WOM scenarios might have been
perceived to be unrealistic due to the experimental design to address the issue of
internal validity. For example, the WOM verbatim used for each experiment was
worded to be suitable for both an expert WOM sender and a non-expert WOM sender.
Hence, the WOM verbatim could not be too informal as it might be in a more natural
setting with friends and family. On a seven-point scale from very unrealistic (1) to very
realistic (7), the mean scores for Experiment 1 (M 4.9) and Experiment 2 (M 4.8)
are only moderately high.
However, the intention for this paper was to look at the specific impact of the
informational influence of WOM. Hence, the choice was to increase experimental
control, rather than ensuring a more naturalistic setting to observe the impact of WOM
and in turn increasing the complexity of the interpretation of the results. The reduction
of potential noise has the benefit of increased power for hypothesis testing. Even
though the use of written scenarios can be viewed as a limitation, it can help to ensure
the study participants elaborate upon the information without confounds of the
signalers appearance or nonverbal cues (Wood, 2006). Vivid methods of manipulation
(e.g. the use of confederates) are much harder to control for extraneous influence,
especially if actual acquaintances, friends, and family members are to be involved in
the experiments. Moreover, a lot of WOM communication today is done through
emails, instant messaging, and social media (e.g. Facebook, private blogs). These forms
of online communication are similar to the WOM context and the presentation mode of
the experiments. The vivid manipulations of WOM may be suitable for future research
that requires a more holistic view of the impact of WOM, whereby control of
extraneous factors may be less of a concern.
Johnson and Russo (1984) look at the nonlinear relationship between product
familiarity (rather than brand familiarity) and learning. There is a possibility that the
same nonlinear relationship holds for brand familiarity as well. For the two
experiments, the means for brand familiarity range from 3.4 to 5.0 on a seven-point
scale. Hence, the findings here are likely to hold for a moderate level of brand
familiarity only. The main difficulty in choosing brands of high or low familiarity is
that the familiarity of the brand can be confounded with the appeal of the brand.

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For example, study participants rated very familiar brands (e.g. Apple) to be
significantly more appealing than less familiar brands in the pretest. Even though
appeal of the brand has been controlled for in the two experiments, the two brands may
still differ on other dimensions. One approach to address this methodological issue is to
manipulate brand familiarity using hypothetical brands. A possible way to do so is to
engage study participants in evaluating advertisements of various brands. The
frequency of the advertisement exposure during the task can be used to manipulate
brand familiarity for each brand. Brand familiarity should increase with the increased
number of prior exposures. Future studies need to take into account the full range of
brand familiarity and address any possible confounds while doing so.
As the target product category of interest (i.e. printers) requires substantial product
knowledge and ability for the consumers to evaluate the product information
systematically, the use of expert heuristic may be more pronounced in this product
category for the average consumer. Consumers who are experts themselves may also
be less inclined to use the expert heuristic, as they are knowledgeable enough to
evaluate product information systematically. Hence, a possible moderator of the
relationship may be the product categories of interest and the level of expertise of the
WOM recipient. These variables can be included in future research.

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Corresponding author
Boon Chong Lim can be contacted at: boonchong@ntu.edu.sg

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