The role of confidence in attitude–intention and beliefs–attitude relationships

Confidence – how certain a consumer feels about his or her evaluation of a brand – is of interest to advertising researchers since it appears to be more susceptible to advertising exposure and repetition than other, more commonly used outcome variables, such as brand attitude and purchase intention. However, the role of confidence is not clear. A number of studies in marketing find that confidence predicts purchase intention, whereas other studies, mostly in psychology, find that confidence moderates attitude–intention or attitude–behaviour relationships. These differences in results may be the result of method differences, as the two groups of studies differ in several ways in their methodologies. The present study tests the role of confidence using data from four largesample internet advertising surveys and finds that confidence moderates the attitude–intention relationship. In addition, the study tests whether or not confidence moderates the belief–attitude relationship and finds that confidence moderates this relationship too.