Using Communication Strategies to Design Food Marketing Strategies: The "Pork Fat" Rumor in Indonesia

Abstract

This study indicates that no universal quelling strategy can be expected to be effective in all kinds of rumor situations in all industries (even within the food industry) in all places. The effectiveness of rumor quelling strategy appears to be related to, in addition to the variables under investigation, perceived importance of the rumor topic by subjects, subjects' focus of attention (the rumor itself or the rumored object), the culture ("high-context" or "low context") from which subjects were drawn, subjects' perceived similarity to the experimenters who denied the rumor, and different content of messages used in the refutation strategies.