Impression Formation Effects of Message Interactivity on the Relationship Between Organizations and Their Publics

Abstract: As organizations develop strategies to leverage the power of interactive media for cultivating relationships with their publics, there has been an increasing emphasis on message interactivity, that is, having threaded conversations with individual stakeholders. This can be quite resource intensive in that it involves not only one-time responses to individual questions, but exchanging a series of messages that are contingent upon preceding messages in the thread. While a minority of the stakeholders interact with organizations, often in a public way through messaging channels such as social media, the vast majority simply bear witness to such interactions without personally participating in the interaction. Does simply viewing others’ interactions affect one’s impression of the organization, and does it vary based on the degree of message interactivity? We studied these questions with an experiment which tested the cueing effect of message interactivity. Data from a 3-condition (message interactivity: low vs. medium vs. high) between-participants experiment ( N = 252) show that message interactivity serves as a cue that leads publics to have greater trust, control mutuality, commitment, and satisfaction by promoting a perception of conversationality. Findings also include potential negative effects of incorporating message interactivity in organizations’ online platforms. Theoretical and methodological implications are discussed.