The effects of informational and transformational appeals on new product launch effectiveness in the high-tech consumer product industry and the role of social media platform credibility.

This study investigates the relationship between message appeals (categorized into informational and transformational appeals) and new product launch effectiveness (measured by purchase intention and the willingness to engage in electronic word-of-mouth behavior). In addition, this study also examines whether such an effect would change when the credibility of Chinese social media platforms, Weibo and Douyin, is incorporated into the model as a moderator. A 2x2 factorial between-subjects experiment is designed to examine this topic. A smartphone from Huawei is used as the product in the experiment as the study mainly focuses on the high-tech consumer products industry. The participants are Chinese native speakers who use Douyin and/or Weibo. Participants are reached via WeChat, one of the most used social media platforms in China, and they are randomly and evenly assigned to one of the four conditions. In total, 143 responses are considered valid and used in the analysis. Two-way MANOVA is adopted as the primary analysis tool in the study. The results show that using transformational appeal to launch a new high-tech consumer product has a more significant effect than using informational appeal, which indicates the purchase intention and willingness to engage in electronic word-of-mouth behavior is higher for messages with a transformational appeal than for messages with an informational appeal. The result also shows that consumers are more likely to have a higher level of purchase intention and willingness to engage in electronic word-of-mouth behaviors when consumers receive a message on a high credible platform. However, no significant interaction effect is found between message appeals and the credibility of social media platforms, meaning that the credibility of social media platforms does not moderate the effect of message appeals on purchase intention and electronic word-of-mouth. The results further show that participants do not significantly differ in their perception of credibility between Douyin and Weibo. This study brings theoretical and practical implications to researchers and practitioners on the topic of how different message appeals can influence the effectiveness of new product launch and how the company can choose suitable social media platforms to release the message to improve people’s acceptance of the new high-tech consumer product.