This experiment used a within-subjects design, exposing each participant to both
companies with negative and positive news stories. Followed by each level of news story,
corporate ad clips were presented with questions measuring participants’ attitudinal and
behavioral changes. This way, individual served as his or her own control for individual
differences. This means that an enormous subject numbers were not necessary and that
extraneous variables caused by individual differences were account for (Lyon & Cameron,
2004).
This research dealt with the negativity effect in terms of two phases: (a) the
negativity effect of negative publicity on consumers’ attitude toward the company; and
(b) the moderating effect of corporate advertising when consumers were encountered
negative publicity about the company. To examine the negativity effect, a comparison
between consumers’ attitudes toward the company having negative publicity and the
company having positive publicity were made. To measure the moderating role of
corporate advertising, participants’ attitudes and behavioral intention to the company
were examined twice.
To examine Hypothesis 1, which was about the effect of negative publicity on
consumers’ attitudes, paired sample t tests were used to compare consumers’ two attitudes
generated by exposure to negative publicity and positive publicity. To test Hypothesis 2
and 3, which were about the moderate effects of corporate advertising on exposure to
negative publicity, a repeated measures ANOVA was used. These are discussed in detail
in statistical procedure.