Brand attitude and purchase intention on sponsored blog posts: A quantitative research examining the moderating effects of product type and brand familiarity

Native advertising, a novel form of paid advertising in which advertisement is tactically blended in with the design and context of the editorial content has burgeoned over the past few years. To safeguard consumers’ interest, the Federal Trade Commission (FTC) has mandated a disclosure of a business relationship with an advertiser if a blogger is being sponsored to review and express opinion about a product. Though native advertising is deemed to be a potent advertising tactic, the disclosure of a sponsored relationship can potentially bring detrimental effects to advertisers, which may in turn negatively affect their brands. While sponsored blog posts are still actively adopted by marketers due to the powerful effect of eWOM, there is still a lack of studies directed towards this area, not to mention the moderating effects of other factors. In order to respond to scholars’ call for more in-depth investigations, this study was guided by the overarching objective of examining the effect of sponsorship disclosure on brand attitude and purchase intention, in which the Persuasion Knowledge Model was incorporated to account for the underlying psychological response explaining the relationship between disclosure and brand attitude. This research also aimed to provide more nuance insights by considering the moderating effects of product type and brand familiarity. A quantitative research with a factorial design of eight different experimental conditions was conducted to yield a sample containing 660 respondents. The results confirmed with previous findings that a disclosure would lead to a less favourable brand attitude, thus a lower purchase intention. However, the difference between disclosure and non-disclosure posts was significantly small. The activation of persuasion knowledge was manifested to fully mediate the effect of sponsorship disclosure on brand attitude. Additionally, persuasion knowledge was discovered to fully mediate the effect of educational level on brand attitude as well. Also, product type was found to have a moderating effect on persuasion knowledge. Interestingly, search good under disclosure was shown to have a stronger and positive moderation on persuasion knowledge than experience good. On the other hand, no significant moderating effect was discovered for brand familiarity. The findings prompt marketers to reflect and reconsider the effectiveness of native advertising in the blogosphere in order to fully exploit this advertising strategy. At the same time, more extensive research on this area is needed for both scholars and marketers to thoroughly understand the values of native advertising.