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Sharing or Not: Psychological Motivations of Brand Rumors Spread and the Stop Solutions

Brand rumors can harm brands’ image and bring significant impacts on customers’ decision-making and sharing behavior. Finding practical strategies for preventing the spread of brand rumors continues to be a challenge. Building on the social contagion theory, the current research enriches the discuss...

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Autores principales: Zhang, Xu, Zhu, Hong, Huang, Yu, Xiao, Chunqu
Formato: Online Artículo Texto
Lenguaje:English
Publicado: Frontiers Media S.A. 2022
Materias:
Acceso en línea:https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC9015072/
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/35444586
http://dx.doi.org/10.3389/fpsyg.2022.830002
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author Zhang, Xu
Zhu, Hong
Huang, Yu
Xiao, Chunqu
author_facet Zhang, Xu
Zhu, Hong
Huang, Yu
Xiao, Chunqu
author_sort Zhang, Xu
collection PubMed
description Brand rumors can harm brands’ image and bring significant impacts on customers’ decision-making and sharing behavior. Finding practical strategies for preventing the spread of brand rumors continues to be a challenge. Building on the social contagion theory, the current research enriches the discussion on understanding why people spread rumors and how to deal with the spreading of rumors. Sharing brand rumors is motivated by a variety of complex psychological reasons, but prior research didn’t adequately analyze the problem from a complexity perspective. Therefore, using a sample of 416 interviewers within eight types of brand rumors, this study employs fuzzy-set qualitative comparative analysis (fsQCA) to investigate the combination of rumor psychological communication motivations in brand activities and solutions to prevent the spread of brand rumors. The current study discoveries three and two first-level configurational solutions, respectively, that can promote positive and negative rumor spreading. To summarize, emotional stimulation is a key component in the spread of rumors; altruism and relationship management motivation can coexist at times; and untrusted rumors are disseminated through other motivation factors. Solutions to prevent rumors from spreading are also provided. Furthermore, the findings help to understand the psychology of configurational motivation and how it can help brands reduce the spread of brand rumors. Finally, these discoveries’ theoretical contributions and practical implications are presented.
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spelling pubmed-90150722022-04-19 Sharing or Not: Psychological Motivations of Brand Rumors Spread and the Stop Solutions Zhang, Xu Zhu, Hong Huang, Yu Xiao, Chunqu Front Psychol Psychology Brand rumors can harm brands’ image and bring significant impacts on customers’ decision-making and sharing behavior. Finding practical strategies for preventing the spread of brand rumors continues to be a challenge. Building on the social contagion theory, the current research enriches the discussion on understanding why people spread rumors and how to deal with the spreading of rumors. Sharing brand rumors is motivated by a variety of complex psychological reasons, but prior research didn’t adequately analyze the problem from a complexity perspective. Therefore, using a sample of 416 interviewers within eight types of brand rumors, this study employs fuzzy-set qualitative comparative analysis (fsQCA) to investigate the combination of rumor psychological communication motivations in brand activities and solutions to prevent the spread of brand rumors. The current study discoveries three and two first-level configurational solutions, respectively, that can promote positive and negative rumor spreading. To summarize, emotional stimulation is a key component in the spread of rumors; altruism and relationship management motivation can coexist at times; and untrusted rumors are disseminated through other motivation factors. Solutions to prevent rumors from spreading are also provided. Furthermore, the findings help to understand the psychology of configurational motivation and how it can help brands reduce the spread of brand rumors. Finally, these discoveries’ theoretical contributions and practical implications are presented. Frontiers Media S.A. 2022-04-04 /pmc/articles/PMC9015072/ /pubmed/35444586 http://dx.doi.org/10.3389/fpsyg.2022.830002 Text en Copyright © 2022 Zhang, Zhu, Huang and Xiao. https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/This is an open-access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License (CC BY). The use, distribution or reproduction in other forums is permitted, provided the original author(s) and the copyright owner(s) are credited and that the original publication in this journal is cited, in accordance with accepted academic practice. No use, distribution or reproduction is permitted which does not comply with these terms.
spellingShingle Psychology
Zhang, Xu
Zhu, Hong
Huang, Yu
Xiao, Chunqu
Sharing or Not: Psychological Motivations of Brand Rumors Spread and the Stop Solutions
title Sharing or Not: Psychological Motivations of Brand Rumors Spread and the Stop Solutions
title_full Sharing or Not: Psychological Motivations of Brand Rumors Spread and the Stop Solutions
title_fullStr Sharing or Not: Psychological Motivations of Brand Rumors Spread and the Stop Solutions
title_full_unstemmed Sharing or Not: Psychological Motivations of Brand Rumors Spread and the Stop Solutions
title_short Sharing or Not: Psychological Motivations of Brand Rumors Spread and the Stop Solutions
title_sort sharing or not: psychological motivations of brand rumors spread and the stop solutions
topic Psychology
url https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC9015072/
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/35444586
http://dx.doi.org/10.3389/fpsyg.2022.830002
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