Customers’ brand avoidance intention to exaggerated advertising in the digital age: an empirical study based on organic agricultural products

Expanding the consumption of organic agricultural products is one of the powerful measures to promote sustainable development. Current mainstream research focuses on the spillover effect of agricultural product advertising promotion, but the mechanism by which exaggerated advertising on consumers’ brand avoidance intentions still unclear. Therefore, taking organic agricultural as the research object, respondents were invited to participate in a questionnaire survey in 4 different promotion scenarios to explore the potential relationship between exaggerated adverting and consumers’ brand avoidance intention (BAI). The results of the study showed that perceived information matching (PIM) had significant effects on perceived brand hypocrisy (PBH); similarly, the effect of perceived publicity intensity (PPI) on perceived brand hypocrisy (PBH) was also significant. By the way, PBH significantly boosts consumers’ BAI. The moderation effect of customers’ information recognition ability (IRA) also verified in this paper. This study introduces the PMT theory into the field of agricultural brand management for the first time, increase the knowledge about the relationship between brand advertising and customers’ brand behaviors, and provides some insights and reference value for both theoretical research and practical application of brand management.