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Perceived Digital Marketing Discourse Strategy Congruence and Information Adoption Intention: The Roles of Discourse Authenticity and Product Type

Author(s)

He Mu1,*, Yang Jie2

Affiliation(s)

1School of Foreign Languages and Literatures, Chongqing Normal University, Chongqing, China 2School of Logistics Engineering, Chongqing Finance and Economic College, Chongqing, China *Corresponding Author

Abstract

In digital marketing contexts, consumers increasingly rely on product descriptions, social media recommendation posts, livestreaming scripts, platform recommendations, and AI-assisted copywriting to understand product information. Standardized, exaggerated, and automated marketing content can activate persuasion knowledge, which makes exposure alone an unreliable predictor of information adoption. Drawing on metadiscourse theory, appraisal theory, the persuasion knowledge model, the information adoption model, and the search-experience-credence (SEC) product typology, this study focuses on consumers’ perceived marketing discourse strategy congruence. It examines the statistical path from perceived marketing discourse strategy congruence to information adoption intention through perceived discourse authenticity and tests whether this relationship varies across search, experience, and credence product contexts. Data were collected through Tencent Questionnaire. After 49 invalid responses were removed under prespecified quality-control criteria, 433 valid responses remained for analysis. Regression and bootstrapping results show that perceived marketing discourse strategy congruence is positively associated with information adoption intention; perceived discourse authenticity has a significant partial mediating effect; and the positive relationship between perceived discourse authenticity and information adoption intention is stronger in experience and credence product contexts than in search product contexts, with the strongest enhancement observed for credence products. A CFA-based single-factor comparison also shows poorer fit for the single-factor model than for the theoretical three-factor model, suggesting that common method bias is unlikely to fully account for the findings. By treating digital marketing discourse as a matter of consumer perception and information judgment, the study offers evidence for more responsible and differentiated marketing communication across product types.

Keywords

Digital Marketing Discourse; Perceived Discourse Authenticity; Information Adoption Intention; SEC Product Typology; Perceived Marketing Discourse Strategy Congruence.

References

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