Inviting questions

Consumers are frequently invited to ask questions in everyday life. The current research provides an initial examination of how inviting consumers to ask questions influences their attitudes and intentions. Two experiments show that inviting questions can have a positive or negative effect depending on whether consumers actually ask them. Experiment 1 shows that merely inviting questions has a positive effect, but that this effect reverses when consumers actually ask questions. Following a similar logic, Experiment 2 shows that inviting questions has a positive effect under low involvement conditions, but a negative effect under high involvement conditions where the likelihood of generating questions is higher.

► How inviting questions from consumers impacts their product attitudes and intentions?
► We show that inviting questions has a positive effect when consumers don't ask them.
► However, inviting questions has a negative effect when consumers generate questions.
► The effect is moderated by level of involvement.
► Inviting questions has a positive effect under low involvement and negative effect under high involvement.