Determinants of Consumer Perceived Trustworthiness in Digital Advertising of Food and Beverage

Determinants of Consumer Perceived Trustworthiness in Digital of Beverage. Vol. 11, No. 8, 2021, Pg. 60 - 77 Abstract The advertising industry has been moving toward digital advertising with the help of internet penetration across the world. Importantly, consumers today are exposed to digital advertising with social media advertising becoming one of the most vital channels to get in touch with the consumers. However, consumer trust in social media is reported to be low although trust is not a static concept but changes over time. Hence, this research aimed to study the relationship between social media advertising and consumer perceived trustworthiness among social media users in Malaysia. Consumers’ perceived trustworthiness is examined through five dimensions of social media advertising namely personalization, electronic word-of-mouth, interactivity, informativeness, and trendiness. The research employed a quantitative research method and resulted in 415 valid respondents. The statistical results indicated that all dimensions of social media advertising have a significant relationship with consumer perceived trustworthiness. In particular, informativeness, personalization, and electronic word-of-mouth were found to have a stronger association with consumer perceived trustworthiness. These findings added to the existing marketing literature and provided valuable insights for marketers on the ways to enhance consumer perceived trustworthiness through various dimensions of social media advertising. Practically, this study will help the food and beverage industry to understand dominant factors that create consumer trustworthiness while designing their social media marketing interventions to maximize the effect of advertising to survive in a fast-changing and competitive business environment.


Introduction
The interest in food has been on an increasing trend among consumers. This positive signal for food demand has encouraged the food and beverage organizations to embrace social media to reach out to the consumers through various communication tools including audio and visuals. When compared to previous kinds of advertising and marketing, most firms and organizations are nowadays depending on digital advertising and marketing tactics (Ali Taha et al., 2021). The rising population of social media users has made social media advertising to be one of the vital channels for food and beverage organizations to get in touch with the consumers. Many major and small businesses use publicly available social media channels to engage in communications in the struggle to stay competitive and relevant (Susanto et al., 2021). A survey conducted in 2018 indicated that on average, every Malaysian spend 2 hours and 58 minutes on social media (Wanxiang, 2019). The social media adoption rate is expected to continue to grow and generation Z will be the main proportion of social media users in near future, where they account for 29.7 percent of the Malaysian total population (Emran & Rahim, 2016). Making social media marketing an integral part of business strategy produces many benefits (Shareef et al., 2019;Shiau et al., 2017) apart from allowing an organization to achieve its marketing objectives (Ajina, 2019) by adapting to the changing behaviors of the consumers (Stephen & Lehmann, 2016). It is the main intention of food and beverage organizations to connect with the customers and to build an ultimate food experience. Social media has been proven to have capabilities in connecting the consumers through product and service brands by influencing their attitudes, and eventually improving organizational performance (Algharabat et al., 2018;Kapoor et al., 2018;Kaur et al., 2018;Lal et al., 2020). While the boom of social media has come as a positive sign to the growth of the food and beverage industry, there are constant challenges posed in managing the business. One of the main challenges revolves around consumer's trustworthiness of the food and beverage served, especially in the context of online businesses. The issue of trustworthiness continuing to be a central focus on social media advertising (Kowang et al., 2018). Kumar and Pradhan (2018) reported that consumer trust in social media is currently low and it is not a static concept but changes over time hence trust management is becoming vital in social media marketing for organizations. A study by Meskaran (2015) further revealed that perceived trustworthiness has a significant direct effect on the online purchase intention of the consumers. More specifically, Samat et al (2014) found that trustworthiness influences one's attitude towards social media advertising before making purchase decisions. Besides, a consumer who is uncomfortable with the ways social media advertising is used by marketers may develop negative attitudes leading to loss of trust and affects their relationship with the organization which in turn affects their purchase decisions (Arnold, 2018;Goldfarb & Tucker, 2013). In contradiction, some authors reported that the trustworthiness of social media advertising is viewed as the least important consideration, especially among youngsters. Nevertheless, in the same year, Xiao et al (2018) and a year later, Balaban and Mustățea (2019) found that trustworthiness is a significant cue in social media marketing. A recent study posited that the impact of social media as a marketing channel for food-related items is minimal (Bermoy et al., 2021) which also adds to existing debates. This unending argument has prompted paramount attention towards the perceived trustworthiness of social media marketing. As a result, figuring out what elements impact people's perceptions of trustworthiness has become a hot topic in academia (Wijenayake et al., 2020). Hence, it has become vital to continuously investigate the determinants of trust among consumers (Luna-Nevarez & Torres, 2015), especially in a social media marketing-oriented business environment that is understudied (Wang et al., 2016) and suffered lack of testable hypotheses (Knoll, 2016). Despite multiple challenges in the industry, restoration of consumer trustworthiness lies in the ability of the food and beverage industry to identify areas of concern so that they are surmountable by embracing the changes through careful and proactive planning and execution of social media marketing. Unlocking these concerns and acting to address them will enable the organizations within the food and beverage industry to navigate the challenges and capitalize on opportunities. Given the contradicting findings in the literature, there is a need for developing a more granular understanding of consumers' trust towards social media advertising. Hence, this study aims to discuss the determinants of consumers' perceived trustworthiness and to provide theoretical and practical contributions about key aspects of social media marketing within the food and beverage context while advancing the knowledge within the marketing domain. It is a timely addition to the marketing literature as the consumers are maturing and social media advertising taking a center stage in the business strategy formulation of the organizations.

Literature Review Consumer Perceived Trustworthiness
Trust can be described as "the willingness to be vulnerable to the actions of another party based on the expectation that the other will perform a particular action important to the trustor, irrespective of the ability to monitor or control that other party" (Mayer et al., 1995). Trust involves buyer-seller relationships (Büttner & Göritz, 2008) and psychologically, the trust would decline when the positive expectations are disconfirmed (Lewicki et al., 2006). Trustworthiness on the other hand is the degree of confidence in the content that shares are valid claims according to Ohanian's study (Ohanian, 1991). Trustworthiness is also viewed as constantly deliver the promised (Erdem & Swait, 2004) failing which will have an advertising effect on consumers. Additionally, according to Jarvenpaa et al (2000), the trustworthiness of customers towards online vendors reflects the extent to which the customer trusts their online vendors in their willingness to buy (McCole et al., 2010) that influencing buying decisions. The strong foundation of trust development leads to the trustworthiness of consumers towards the organization driven by emotional or sentimental attachments (Kumar & Pradhan, 2018). Consumers who search for information on multiple social media platforms perceive the information obtained as more trustworthy than the traditional communication channels alone (Mangold & Faulds, 2009;Vollmer & Precourt, 2008).

Social Media Advertising
Social media is a common term today as it links people across the world. Moreover, social media is also a platform used to share information. Social Media Advertising on the other hand is a platform that lets the users reciprocate user-generated content on the internet-based platform such as blogs, wikis, Instagram, Facebook, Twitter, and YouTube (Kaplan & Haenlein, 2010). It is an instrument for business owners to enhance value through marketing activities as part of their marketing strategy (Pham & Gammoh, 2015). The emerging trend in business is social media marketing, and this study can assist entrepreneurs and business owners in improving their marketing methods (Bermoy et al., 2021). So social media advertising will have the power to influence consumers. Social media advertising can be a 2-edged sword. It can allow users to comment freely on the platform boosting the brand or spoiling, spamming, or damaging the brand intentionally. The consumer's behavior shift has led the advertising industry to adapt to the consumer's behavior changes, and start shifting their marketing strategy from traditional media to digital media. This has provided the marketer with a good opportunity to reach a broader range of consumers since there is a growing trend of social media adoption that enables the generation of an individual relationship with the users (Kelly et al., 2010). This also has allowed the marketer to change the way brand content is shaped, circulated, and consumed. The effectiveness of any media plan is determined by how successfully the advertising strategy is implemented while keeping the target audience in mind (Gupta & Maheshwari, 2021). A review of social media advertising indicated that several dimensions often characterize it.

Interactivity
Interactivity is defined as a relationship between two parties, where it can be people or objects. Interactivity is an activity that involves interaction, frequently involved with many previous messages or experiences. So, it can also be explained as the extent to which communication reflects on itself, feeds on, and responds to the past (Newhagen & Rafaeli, 1996). According to the social media integration theory, higher interactivity on the post will generate higher exposure in social media. From a marketing perspective, interactivity is explained as the degree of Social Media Advertising to provide a group or platform for its consumers to share content and feedback (Yadav & Rahman, 2018). It allows the company to gain insight into consumer satisfaction through the comment and feedback shared on social media. While interactivity can be distinguished from different perspectives consist of the type of communication and formal property (Downes & McMillan, 2000). The formal property perspective which refers to a media technology is a measure of a media's ability to let the users influence the content and/or form of the mediated communication (Toscan, 1999).

Informativeness
Informativeness is referred to the degree to which the social media platform delivers valuable, accurate, and comprehensive info. The subjective evaluation of users as to whether the information matches their demands and intended usage will determine the informativeness quality (Jiang et al., 2021). Based on the study conducted previously, 63 percent of millennials like and follow the brand on Facebook (Yadav & Rahman, 2018). Cognitive Learning Theory (Nicosia, 1966) confirmed that consumers tend to analyses the information in an advertisement through personal understanding. Additionally, the consumers are also predicted to trust the information shared on official pages, as it provides official, legitimate, and comprehensive information. Previous researchers found that the credibility and reliability of the advertisement possibly are subject to the argument and counterargument in the advertising statement (Kim & Ko, 2010). Regardless of traditional or online advertisement, Informativeness plays an important role to create consumers' positive perceptions towards the advertisement (Shareef et al., 2019). Therefore, the informativeness of the advertisement content plays a very vital part in being persuasive. The information on the media platform is among other factors that affect the consumer's perceived value and credibility of the advertisement.

Personalization
Personalization refers to the degree of the social media custom-made service to fulfill the requirement of a consumer. (Kettinger & Lee, 1994) explained that personalization is about providing information that individualized attention to users' perceptions. Online behavioral targeting in advertising is commonly used in social media advertising, which is advertised based on user purchase and search history. Usually, it will follow the users across multiple platforms, from web browsers to social media platforms. Such moves are a two-edge sword marketing strategy. On one hand, it will increase the exposure while on the other hand, it might create irritation on the users as well (Hassan et al., 2013). Nevertheless, some researchers (Goodwin, 1996;Mittal & Lassar, 1996) indicated that such personalization services by the organizations allow users to focus consideration on the subject of interest and filter the subject that is not related to the consumer's interest. The positive findings of personalization research postulate that personalized content to consumers' specific interests creates positive user attitudes toward the media, which leads to better satisfaction and create higher user engagement (Erat et al., 2006;Kettinger & Lee, 1994;Prahalad & Ramaswamy, 2004). This can be attributed to the relevance of the personalized content that motivates user engagement for quality social interaction (Parasuraman et al., 1991;Prahalad & Ramaswamy, 2004).

Trendiness
Social media is a platform able to offer the newest topics and is heavily discussed in news (Naaman et al., 2011). One of such topics includes the trendiness of consumers. Trendiness is referred to the degree of social media advertising's ability to provide trendy content. The trendiness can also be considered as a propagation or spread of the latest and trendy information (Godey et al., 2016). The implantation of trendiness is very common in social media advertising. It is often used to generate the viral effect in social media where the organizations can make use of the viral effect to promote the company, and the attractiveness of the post will have a positive influence on the consumers' attitude (Lim et al., 2017).

Electronic Word of Mouth
Consumers tend to look for information and comment when making a purchase decision. Therefore, Electronic Word-of-Mouth (eWOM) has a high influence on consumer perception and purchase intention. eWOM refers to the degree to which social media user recommends and share experience on a platform. The eWOM activity in social media can be classified into three perspectives: opinion seeking, opinion passing, and opinion giving (Chu & Kim, 2011). Social media has created a perfect environment for consumers to generate and share eWOM about products or services related information to their connection in social media without restriction (Kim & Ko, 2010;Vollmer & Precourt, 2008). Research provided empirical evidence that eWoM has a positive and significant association with consumer's perceived brand image and social media trustworthiness (Yunus et al., 2016). Hence, organizations use eWOM as an alternative medium to promote their good and services. Muntinga et al. (2011) posited that eWOM is beneficial to the organization because it involves an online consumer to consumers sharing about the brands and products that are indirect marketing to an organization. While interactivity, informativeness, personalization, and trendiness are internally planned and executed by the organizations, eWOM is a mediator that mediates the internal marketing plans of the organization.

Research Model and Hypotheses
Social media has become an important area for many advertisers as it provides new opportunities to organizations (Lakshmanan & Basariya, 2017). The emergence and rise of social media reshaped the communication channels and captured the attention of various parties including organizations and customers in confronting different types of challenges arising from changes to consumer behaviours and consumption patterns. More importantly, Mir (2012) highlighted the influence of social media advertising on consumer attitudes and their behaviour of clicking favourable advertisements. This is one of the many ways organizations pursue to persuade customers to buy the products being advertised. Hence, it is evident that social media advertising will have the power to impact the consumers' response to the product and eventually affect purchase intention (Hutter et al., 2013;Kim & Ko, 2010). Interactivity is widely acknowledged as an essential component of the communication process and as a relational maintenance technique that leads to relational outcomes (Ariel & Avidar, 2015). Past research has shown that a high level of perceived interactivity will encourage attitudes towards the advertisement on social media (Yaakop et al., 2013). Besides, Hadija (2008) found that perceived interactivity to be a significant factor influencing consumer responses toward social media advertising. Therefore, it was hypothesized that interactivity in social media advertising is positively associated with consumer perceived trustworthiness. Consequently, it is hereby hypothesized that: H1: There is a significant relationship between interactivity and consumer perceived trustworthiness.
Credible and complete information shared by the organizations enables consumers to make informed decisions in making their decisions. Consumers are likely to receive the information through the intended meaning of the statement (Ertmer & Newby, 1993). Consumers tend to digest information in an advertisement through personal perception. Therefore, informativeness in social media advertising plays a key part in persuading and influence consumers perceived trustworthiness. It was found that consumers' positive perceptions towards the advertisement have been proven in all types of advertisement communications including traditional media as well as online media (Shareef et al., 2019). On the grounds of these discussions, it is therefore hypothesized that: H2: There is a significant relationship between informativeness and consumer perceived trustworthiness Social media users tend to have positive attitudes toward personalized content and it leads to higher engagement and better satisfaction in social media advertising. This was evident in many researches since the last three decades (Erat et al., 2006;Kettinger & Lee, 1994;Prahalad & Ramaswamy, 2004). It is also argued that the key factor that drives higher user engagement is the quality of the social interaction, where the content shared to use is relevant instead of the frequency of the interactions (Parasuraman et al., 1991;Prahalad & Ramaswamy, 2004). Understanding consumer behavior allows organizations to ensure that personalized advertisements are populated while the consumers are on social media. Such personalization tackles the interest of the customers and such personalized advertisements are influencing consumer decisions. Hence, it was hypothesized that: H3: There is a significant relationship between personalization and consumer perceived trustworthiness.
Trendiness is another aspect of online advertisements that has gained wide attention in the past. Generally, trendiness is associated with younger people who are very concerned and very positive about it (Auty & Elliott, 1998). Trendiness which is complemented with viral effect creates attractiveness to the advertisement and eventually result in a positive effect on the consumer's attitude (Lim et al., 2017). When organizations are aware of current trends and tailor suit their online advertisements to match these trends, their online marketing strategies often have an enhanced impact in attracting customers who are active users of social media. Therefore, it was hypothesized that: H4: There is a significant relationship between trendiness and consumer perceived trustworthiness. Electronic Word of Mouth (eWoM) relates to any positive or negative statements by former, current, and potential customers about an organization's product and/or services. It is usergenerated content over digital marketing platforms. Muntinga et al (2011) clarified that social media view eWOM as an online consumer to consumers sharing about the brands or products. Nevertheless, eWOM may overlap to include viral marketing to engage the customers in communication processes that influence consumers buying decisions. eWOM may become a viral component if the message being communicated is sufficiently persuasive (Estrella-Ramón & Ellis-Chadwick, 2017). Yunus et al (2016) explained that eWOM positively and significantly affects the consumer's perceived brand image and social media trustworthiness. In this vein, various researches have emphasized the importance of eWOM in creating trustworthiness among consumers. It is envisaged that a positive word of mouth is expected to enhance trustworthiness while negative views will affect the impact of social media marketing activities. Therefore, it was hypothesized that there is a significant positive relationship between eWoM and consumer perceived trustworthiness in social media advertising. H5: There is a significant relationship between the Electronic Word of mouth and consumer perceived trustworthiness.
The present study is underpinned by two prominent theories in understanding consumers, namely the Uses and Gratifications Theory and Theory of Reasoned Action. These theories in general address the consumers' trust and attitudes toward social media marketing (Xu-Priour et al., 2014). Plume and Slade (2018) explained that the Uses and Gratifications Theory is one of the noticeable and mainstream theories that discover the motivations of a consumer in determining the attitudinal and behavioral outcomes. This universality allows the research to be applied to investigate various scenarios. Besides, this theory is also used to explain the reasons for users selecting a particular media of their choice against all other available media (Dolan et al., 2016). The use of Uses and Gratifications Theory has evolved over the years (Hossain, 2019;Mishra, 2019;Zong et al., 2019) from traditional forms (e.g. newspaper, telephone, radio, etc.) to other areas of research in understanding the media users' interest (Corkindale et al., 2018;Thongsri et al., 2018). While the Theory of Reasoned Action has a similar focus as of Uses and Gratifications Theory to understand trust, behavior, and attitude of consumers (Xu-Priour et al., 2014), the Theory of Reasoned Action becomes influential in discovering insights from a technical use perspective of consumers (Nwagwu & Famiyesin, 2016). Underpinned by these two theories, Figure 1 shows the proposed framework for this research.

Figure 1
Research Model

Methodology Sample and Data Collection
The sampling framework will be used in this research according to Kothari et al. (1997), an optimum sample size that is big enough to provide the desired confidence interval and should not be too small that may create unfairness toward the research result. This research will study social media platform users in Malaysia by focusing on the food and beverage industry. An estimated 24.6 million social media users in Malaysia. According to Krejcie and Morgan's Table, with a 95% confidence level and 5% margin error, the total sampling size was 384 respondents for more than 1 million population. This research employed a convenience sampling technique, it will be collecting data in a large population and it provides convenient and cost-effective ways to collect data.

Measures and Instrumentation
The Likert scale is commonly used in social sciences research. 5-point Likert scale will be used, 1 indicating strongly disagree to 5 indicating strongly agree. To conduct the research, validated instruments were adopted from previous research to measure the consumer perception of social media advertising activities (Yadav & Rahman, 2018). On the other hand, the instrument for the perceived trustworthiness of online shops was adopted from McKnight et al. (1998). Table 1 shows a summary of the research instruments and items.

Research Sample Analysis
A useable 415 responses were received from the survey conducted. In terms of gender, both males and females participated in almost an equal proportion. As indicated earlier discussions, respondents from the age group of 18 to 25 years old made up 55% of the total respondents.

Sample Adequacy
Sample adequacy is used to inspect the adequacy of the sample and the appropriateness of data for Factor Analysis (Burton & Mazerolle, 2011). Kaiser-Meyer-Olkin (KMO) (Kaiser, 1960) was used to quantify and examine the sampling adequacy. KMO can range between 0 and 1, while 0.50 is considered appropriate for subsequent analysis (Hair et al., 1998). On the other hand, Bartlett's Test of Sphericity (Bartlett, 1950) requires that the approximate chi-square value be significant (p<0.5). .000 As shown in Table 3, the KMO value of 0.866 was obtained which is >0.5 and is adequate while Bartlett's test significance value is <0.05, therefore, a null hypothesis is rejected. Hence, it was concluded that the sample is adequate for subsequent analyses and hypotheses testing. Hair et al. (2010) explained reliability as an examination of the degree of uniformity among multiple measurements of a variable. Nunnally (1994) suggests Cronbach's alpha value should exceed the values of 0.70 as consider a consistent and reliable questionnaire. The result is of the reliability test is shown in Table 4. All constructs scored more than 0.700 hence it was confirmed that construct reliability has been achieved. The results of convergent validity indicators are shown in Table 5. The factor loading ranged between 0.728 and 0.869. A composite reliability score of more than 0.600 was reported. Finally, an average variance extracted value of at least 0.850 was achieved in the study. Based on these results, it was concluded that the measurement model in this study has obtained sufficient convergent validity and all items of the constructs were valid measures. The results of discriminant validity are shown in Table 6. As shown, the square root of AVE (in bold) is well above inter-construct correlations (off-diagonal) for all constructs. Therefore, the Fornell-Larcker criterion was satisfied.

Hypotheses Testing
Fulfillment of preliminary tests as discussed above allowed testing of hypotheses proposed in the research. Table 7 shows the results of the hypotheses testing. Results indicated that the p-value of all hypotheses tested was < 0.05. This indicates that all hypotheses tested in the study were significant and therefore retained. Besides, the standardized beta value provided adequate evidence of a positive relationship between Interactivity, Informativeness, Personalization, Trendiness, Electronic Word of Mouth, and Consumer Perceived Trustworthiness. More importantly, Personalization and Electronic Word of Mouth were found to be stronger predictors of Consumer Perceived Trustworthiness.

Discussion
The results inferred there is a significant relationship established between social media advertising dimensions and consumer perceived trustworthiness. Hence, the study provided empirical evidence that the use of social media advertising would increase the consumer's perceived trustworthiness. This finding is in line with the previous study where Duffett (2015) reported that higher time spent on social media would result in more favorable behavioral attitudes towards social media advertising. These findings have also strengthened premises advocated by Credibility Theory attractiveness would increase trustworthiness (Phung & Qin, 2018). This was affirmed by Lafferty and Goldsmith (1999) who discovered that credibility is an important factor that influences the genesis of attitude and behavior towards advertising which supports the relationship between Social Media Advertising and Consumer Perceived Trustworthiness. Interactivity can reflect the ability to control, communication in both directions, and synchronicity (Liu & Shrum, 2002). This is also referring to the degree of freedom where the user can manipulate the content and presented information (Bezjian-Avery et al., 1998). For example, high control can be a social media platform, whereas low control can be traditional TV. Whereas high control can let the users freely choose what and how to read the content, high control provides consumers more chances to seek the related information in an active manner (Wang et al., 2012).
Information was also found to influence the level of trustworthiness among the consumers. This was evident in the research since a positive association was found between informativeness and consumer perceived trustworthiness. Shareef et al. (2019) concurred with this finding and further explained that informativeness plays an important role to create consumers' positive perceptions towards the advertisement regardless of traditional or online advertisement. Personalization is the highest predictor of customer perceived trustworthiness in the research. This is mainly because the social media content that is filtered toward user preference will lead to higher satisfaction and better user engagement (Erat et al., 2006). On the other hand, the quality of social interaction is the key factor that drives higher user engagement, instead of the content shared frequency (Prahalad & Ramaswamy, 2004). In brief, if a personalized user experience is made, users will notice their role as more important and related, and it creates a more fulfilling experience toward the site (Di Gangi & Wasko, 2016), therefore informativeness would increase the consumer perceived trustworthiness which strongly supports the relationship between social media advertising and consumer perceived trustworthiness. Godey et al. (2016) posit that trendiness is the propagation or spread of the latest and trendiness information. Auty and Elliott (1998) added that younger people were likely to be viewed as trendy. The significant positive association between electronic word of mouth and consumer perceived trustworthiness was also evident in the previous researches where Yunus et al. (2016) found that the eWoM is positively affecting the consumers' perceived social media trustworthiness.

Conclusion
Social media advertising is becoming one of the major advertising channels today, as such by understanding and identified the dominant factor that influences consumer perceived trustworthiness becomes vital for delivering effective advertising with trustworthiness being the key driver that influences customers (Hee & Yen, 2018). The study has contributed theoretically by providing additional insights in explaining consumer behaviors toward social media advertising. Additionally, it has provided insights about the dominant dimension that is affecting and contributing to the customer's perceived trustworthiness, which was evident through the standardized beta, values reported. From a practical implications perspective, this study provided some directions for the advertising industry to prepare for the advertising revolution, as people start shifting from traditional advertising to the social media advertising channel. People are now are spending more time on social media platforms. This study would allow the advertiser to understand social media users' behaviors. Thus, this study will help social media advertising in general and the food and beverage industry, in particular, to look into dominant factors that create consumer trustworthiness while designing their social media marketing interventions to maximize the effect of advertising. This would ultimately lead to stronger survival in a fast-changing and competitive business environment.