In this research, we are going to explore the effect of processing fluency and different types of appeal on consumer’s prosocial intention. There are contradictory findings regarding the effects of processing fluency whether easy to process fluency (EPF) or difficult to process fluency (DPF) is more efficient to lead prosocial behavior (Reber, Schwarz, & Winkielman, 2004). However, we predict that different appeals based on egoistic or altruistic motives may influence people’s perceptions of processing fluency. In particular, if a primed appeal concerns egoistic motives, effort to reach the selfish appeal could not be reflected as honorable for themselves (Zhang, Xu, Jiang, & Huang, 2010). As a result, we predict that such perceived disgraceful efforts will increase unpleasant emotional states such as guilt, which arises when experiencing possible objections to their actions or intentions (Peloza, White, & Shang, 2013). Thus, we hypothesized and found that in study 1, people primed with self-benefiting appeals considered a difficult to process campaign to be less favorable than an easy to process campaign. Self-benefiting appeals increased a sense of guilt when people are in a DPF condition compared to an EPF condition. Finally, in study 2, the demonstrated effect from study 1 was explained with underlying mechanism as a sense of guilt. In conclusion, this study has theoretical implications in discovering the relationship between processing fluency and different types of appeal. When the appeal is considered disgraceful from egoistic motives, putting extra efforts into DPF campaigns is considered unjustifiable through increasing guilty feelings. This effect causes unfavorable attitudes toward DPF campaigns and decreases prosocial behavior. As a result, our findings provide insights for marketers by suggesting effective strategies for designing prosocial campaigns.

A large body of word-of-mouth (WOM) research has shown that ratings, rating volume, and text comments function as determinants to assessing quality of products (Berger, 2014; Chen & Lurie, 2013). However, little attention has been paid to the reviewers as a significant source of product evaluation (He & Bond, 2013). To be specific, there is a lack of understanding whether a product is preferred because it was recommended by an associative group or because it was not preferred by a dissociative reference group (dissimilar to self). The results from Study 1 demonstrated that participants are more influenced by similarity-attraction than by dissimilarity-repulsion. To be specific, African American participants rated product a higher, which was recommended by their associative reference group. Similar pattern was revealed in the male group. In Study 2, we found an underlying mechanism to explain the effects from Study 1. We tested the perceived difficulty of processing as a potential mediator for this phenomenon and utilized a choice/reject task. The analysis of moderated mediation (Hayes, 2013) revealed that the significant indirect effect of the number of options on purchase intention was conditional on the deleting approach but not on the choosing approach. By rejecting multiple alternatives, participants were more likely to buy the product since it is easier to make decision. In conclusion, this finding provides insights regarding the decisionmaking process resulting from social influence based on a reference-dependence approach.