Perceived message consistency: Explicating how brand messages being processed across multiple online media

Abstract

People tend to search product information from various online media. Although high perceived message consistency is crucial to a brand`s success, how multiple online brand messages being processed and how can it be measured have not been elucidated and tested. This study initiates an attempt to articulate the mechanism underlying perceived message consistency across multiple online media and to develop a scale using a rigid scale development procedure. Three survey studies have been conducted. The findings demonstrated that perceived message consistency results from the relevancy and expectancy evaluations. Relevancy and expectancy evaluations are either positively or negatively correlated in the high-relevancy situation and not correlated in the low-relevancy situation. In addition, the eight scale items developed by this study have been demonstrated to be valid and reliable to measure perceived message consistency across individuals of different ages (i.e., from 18 to 61), product categories (i.e., bottled water, movie, and notebook), and online media (i.e., YouTube, news site, and review site). The scale items were also demonstrated to be better than existing scales that involve only relevancy evaluation items.