Why do consumers committed to a brand counterargue negative information? : understanding the mediating role of arousal

Past research has found that consumers committed to a brand tend to counterargue negative information about that brand to a greater extent than less committed consumers. This dissertation attempts to find the motivational reasons that make committed consumers generate greater counterarguments against negative information. Arousal is implicated as the intervening variable. Further, this research also examines what happens to the arousal after the threat from the negative information has been successfully handled. It was hypothesized that high brand commitment consumers would experience greater arousal than low brand commitment consumers when presented with negative brand information and that this arousal will mediate the effects of commitment on counterarguments. An experiment with high and low commitment consumers was conducted to test this hypothesis. As expected, high brand commitment consumers showed relatively higher levels of self-reported arousal compared to the low brand commitment consumers when presented with negative brand information. A mediation analysis indicated that arousal mediated the effects of commitment on counterarguments. Next, it was hypothesized that for high commitment consumers, arousal would be significantly lower when sufficient opportunity was provided to handle the threat of the negative information compared to when sufficient opportunity was not provided to handle the threat. For the low commitment consumer, arousal would not be significantly different whether provided the opportunity or not. Two experiments were conducted to test this hypothesis. The results of both the experiments showed that high brand commitment consumers who were provided less than adequate time to process the negative information had a higher level of arousal, as measured by electrodermal activity, compared to those who were provided more than adequate time to process the message. The low brand commitment consumers did not differ in their arousal level whether or not provided with adequate time to process the message.