La vie en Rose at the top? Why Positive (Negative) Information goes Up (Down) in a Hierarchy

A key concern for marketers, both in academia and practice, is understanding when and why positive and negative product information spreads through word-of-mouth (WOM). Indeed, positive WOM often leads to an increase in sales (Chen, Wang and Xie 2011) or value (Villanueva, Yoo and Hanssens 2008) whereas negative WOM may decrease brand evaluations (Amdt 1967; Haywood 1989) or even spark damaging rumors about a brand (Dubois, Rucker and Tormala 2011). While some research suggests that consumers are more likely to share negative WOM (e.g., Kamins, Folkes and Pernes 1997), other studies show that consumers can, at times, share positive rather than negative WOM (e.g., East, Hammond and Wright 2007). Regardless of the valence of information shared, consumers tend to share information that is more psychologically arousing to them (Berger and Milkman 2012). This is because arousal is a state of excitement which leads to mobilization (Berger and Milkman 2012). Extant research shows that consumers’ likelihood to share a stimuli (e.g. a WOM message or a video) increases when the content evokes arousing emotions such as anxiety or amusement, relative to content that evokes emotions which are less arousing, such as sadness or contentment (Gross and Levenson 1995). Accordingly, even incidental arousal unrelated to the message content (e.g., whether a sender is physically aroused when sharing information) can boost sharing (Berger 2011). We aim to shed light on when consumers will share more positive or negative WOM as a function of arousal. Our reasoning builds on the premise that information is not arousing per se. Rather; information becomes more or less arousing depending on the context of the information sharing (Berger 2011) or the sender and recipient’s characteristics.