Understanding Consumer Motivations to Share Rumours in the Marketplace

Abstract

Rumours have always been an interesting aspect of investigation in interpersonal communication. Koenig (1985) suggested that rumours are the dominant form of Word of Mouth (WOM) in mass circulation. A rumour is defined as “an unverified and instrumentally relevant information statement in circulation that arises in contexts of ambiguity, danger, or potential threat and that function to help people make sense and manage risk” (DiFonzo & Bordia, 2007). Rumours can potentially affect perceptions about the product and brand images, rumours cause changes to the credibility of the brands, and affect customer loyalty (Kimmel, 2004; Kapferer, 1990; Koenig, 1985). The overload of commercially generated marketing communication confuses the customer and guides the customer to explore non-commercial forms of information; like WOM (Meiners et al., 2010). Marketplace rumours are fast propagated, especially through social networks (Kostka et al., 2008). In the recent years there have been many rumours that have emerged in the marketplace and have created drastic effects on the marketing scenario (Kimmel, 2004). But, despite the importance of rumours, there has been little attention paid to rumour research in the marketing context (Kimmel & Audrain-Pontevia, 2010), although this stream of research is not totally new (e.g. Kamins et, al. 1997; Kimmel, 2004; Kimmel & Audrain-Pontevia, 2010)...