Brand Message Authenticity

1. Abstract

The Brand Message Authenticity (BRMAU) scale is an empirically validated psychometric instrument designed to evaluate consumers’ perceived authenticity, truthfulness, and communicative sincerity regarding specific brand communications, corporate advocacy campaigns, and social media disclosures. Developed by Shoenberger, Kim, and Sun (2021), the instrument emerged in response to the growing prevalence of corporate social advocacy (CSA) and brand activism, where commercial entities publicly adopt stances on controversial socio-political issues. While antecedent measurement models focused almost exclusively on enduring, macro-level constructs such as global brand authenticity or generalized corporate credibility, the BRMAU scale isolates the episodic, message-level evaluation of communicative acts. The instrument comprises a five-item sentence-completion framework that systematically captures five core facets of message-level appraisal: perceived message authenticity, informational truthfulness, underlying motivational genuineness, demonstrated altruistic concern for a designated societal cause or issue, and benevolent care for consumers in general.

The scale employs a seven-point Likert or semantic-differential compatible response format anchored from strongly disagree to strongly agree (or relevant semantic poles). Across rigorous empirical investigations involving diverse consumer panels, the BRMAU scale demonstrates exceptional psychometric robustness. Confirmatory factor analyses confirm a parsimonious, unidimensional latent structure characterized by high item factor loadings ranging from .82 to .93 and robust model fit indices (e.g., Comparative Fit Index [CFI] > .97, Tucker-Lewis Index [TLI] > .96, Root Mean Square Error of Approximation [RMSEA] < .06). Reliability analyses indicate high internal consistency, with Cronbach’s alpha coefficients consistently exceeding .90, accompanied by composite reliability values above .91 and average variance extracted (AVE) values surpassing .65. Construct, convergent, and discriminant validity analyses substantiate that the BRMAU scale successfully disentangles situational message perception from generalized brand prestige, source credibility, and prior corporate reputation. Furthermore, predictive validity testing demonstrates that perceived brand message authenticity strongly mediates the relationship between brand-activism messaging strategies and downstream consumer outcomes, including brand attitudes, message elaboration, perceived hypocrisy, and purchase intentions.

2. Keywords

Brand message authenticity, brand activism, corporate social advocacy, advertising credibility, consumer skepticism, message perception, persuasion knowledge model, attribution theory, psychometrics, corporate communication.

3. Authors

The Brand Message Authenticity (BRMAU) scale was conceptualized, operationalized, and psychometrically validated by a collaborative team of researchers in advertising, media psychology, and strategic communication:

• Heather Shoenberger, Ph.D., J.D. — Associate Professor of Advertising, Donald P. Bellisario College of Communications, The Pennsylvania State University. Dr. Shoenberger’s research concentrates on strategic communication, consumer data privacy, advertising ethics, and the cognitive and emotional processing of brand activism campaigns.
• Eunjin (Anna) Kim, Ph.D. — Associate Professor of Advertising, Department of Advertising and Public Relations, Grady College of Journalism and Mass Communication, University of Georgia. Dr. Kim specializes in digital advertising, narrative persuasion, interactive health communication, and consumer perceptions of branded social initiatives.
• Yiyi Sun, Ph.D. — Assistant Professor of Public Relations and Strategic Communication. Dr. Sun’s scholarship focuses on corporate communication, issue advocacy, stakeholder engagement, and quantitative psychometric modeling in digital media environments.

The foundational scale validation was published in the peer-reviewed treatise: Shoenberger, H., Kim, E. A., & Sun, Y. (2021). Advertising activism: The role of perceived brand message authenticity. Journal of Advertising, 50(3), 249–263. Inquiries regarding conceptual frameworks or commercial reproduction permissions are conventionally addressed to the corresponding authors via their institutional affiliations.

4. Purpose

The primary purpose of the Brand Message Authenticity (BRMAU) scale is to provide a precise, psychometrically rigorous measurement instrument capable of assessing situational, message-level consumer appraisals of corporate communication. Over the past decade, strategic communication has witnessed a paradigm shift from traditional corporate social responsibility (CSR)—which typically involves consensus-driven philanthropic practices such as community grants or environmental cleanup—toward brand activism and corporate social advocacy (CSA). In CSA contexts, brands explicitly align themselves with contentious, politically polarized issues, ranging from systemic racial equality and LGBTQ+ rights to immigration reform and climate legislation. Consequently, consumers increasingly approach these communications with heightened vigilance, scrutinizing whether an organization’s public declarations represent an authentic ethical commitment or a cynical commercial exploitation commonly termed “woke-washing” or “slacktivism.”

Prior to the development of the BRMAU scale, researchers and practitioners lacked an operational tool dedicated specifically to the evaluation of the message itself. Existing psychometric inventories, such as the Perceived Brand Authenticity scale (Morhart et al., 2015) or source credibility inventories (Ohanian, 1990), focus on global, enduring cognitive schemata associated with an enterprise or endorser over time. While an individual may hold an established baseline view of an enterprise, an individual promotional advertisement, press release, or viral social media post generates acute cognitive and affective appraisals. The BRMAU scale bridges this empirical void by isolating the message as the focal unit of analysis. It captures whether the specific textual, visual, and thematic elements of a communication are perceived as genuine, truthful, and benevolent at the exact moment of exposure.

From an applied and experimental perspective, the BRMAU scale provides behavioral scientists and consumer psychologists with a standardized diagnostic mechanism. In experimental designs, it serves as a critical manipulation check or continuous mediator, unpacking the psychological mechanisms that translate message framing into consumer support or backlash. For market researchers and brand strategists, the tool enables pre-testing of advocacy campaigns, social issue announcements, and crisis communication responses. By evaluating how target demographic segments score a message on its perceived authenticity, organizations can assess communication risk, minimize perceived opportunism, and ensure that advocacy communications resonate credibly with target audiences.

5. Psychological Construct

The psychological construct assessed by the BRMAU instrument is perceived brand message authenticity, conceptually delineated as an episodic, audience-centric appraisal of whether a specific persuasive or advocacy message represents an honest, non-manipulative, and intrinsically motivated communicative expression. Rather than operating as an inherent, objective property of an advertisement, message authenticity functions as a subjective, inferential judgment constructed by the recipient during information processing. The construct comprises five interconnected cognitive and affective facets:

1. Perceived Message Authenticity

The foundational facet captures the overarching perception that the communication is real, original, and true to the brand’s core organizational identity, rather than an artificial posture manufactured for transient public relations leverage. When exposed to persuasive discourse, consumers generate internal attributions regarding whether the message aligns with the communicator’s operational reality. A message scoring high on this dimension is perceived as unpretentious and reflective of the company’s genuine organizational character.

2. Informational Truthfulness

Truthfulness encompasses the epistemic validity and factual integrity of the assertions embedded within the communication. In the context of strategic messaging, consumers evaluate whether the arguments, factual claims, and underlying premises of the communication are accurate and transparent or deceptive, exaggerated, and misleading. This dimension directly counterbalances perceived corporate deception and greenwashing, measuring whether the recipient accepts the communication as an honest representation of reality.

3. Underlying Motivational Genuineness

Motivational genuineness relates to the perceived intentionality driving the communicative act. Rooted in attributional psychology, this facet evaluates whether the consumer attributes the message to intrinsic, value-driven corporate motives versus extrinsic, opportunistic, profit-maximizing motives. Genuineness reflects the recipient’s conviction that the brand is communicating because it genuinely believes in the moral imperative of the discourse, rather than engaging in cynical consumer courtship or defensive public relations tactics.

4. Demonstrated Care for the Specific Issue or Cause

Advocacy communications explicitly address focal societal challenges, such as racial justice, marriage equality, or ecological preservation. The BRMAU construct uniquely incorporates an issue-specific dimension, evaluating whether the communication conveys profound, committed, and tangible organizational concern for the specific cause. This facet measures whether the brand is perceived as possessing real “skin in the game” through enduring investment and empathy, rather than merely using a popular social movement as an aesthetic backdrop for commercial persuasion.

5. Demonstrated Benevolent Care for Consumers

The final facet addresses consumer-directed benevolence. Rooted in social perception theories of warmth and competence, this component measures whether the communication reflects an earnest concern for the well-being of stakeholders and consumers broadly. When a brand demonstrates that it values people over pure commercial extraction, consumers perceive the communication as socially supportive, enhancing relational trust and communicative legitimacy.

6. Theoretical Framework

The theoretical architecture underpinning the BRMAU scale integrates three major socio-cognitive paradigms: the Persuasion Knowledge Model (PKM), Attribution Theory, and Costly Signaling Theory.

The Persuasion Knowledge Model (PKM)

Developed by Friestad and Wright (1994), the PKM posits that over time, consumers develop intuitive theories about persuasion tactics and mechanisms. When exposed to commercial discourse, individuals dynamically activate “persuasion knowledge” to identify how, why, and to what end a communicator is attempting to influence them. In traditional product-centric advertising, persuasion knowledge activation leads to calibrated skepticism. However, in the context of brand activism, the activation of persuasion knowledge can be particularly pronounced: consumers immediately evaluate whether an advocacy message is an authentic expression of corporate principles or an insidious tactic designed to manipulate public sentiment for market gain.

The BRMAU scale operationalizes the outcome of this persuasion coping process. If a consumer’s persuasion coping mechanisms detect a high degree of manipulative intent, the message is categorized as inauthentic and opportunistically co-opted. Conversely, if the message demonstrates transparent alignment and benevolent care, persuasion knowledge activation remains low or unthreatening, enabling the consumer to categorize the communication as an authentic social contribution.

Attribution Theory and Correspondent Inferences

Complementing the PKM, Kelley’s (1967) Covariation Model and Jones and Davis’s (1965) Correspondent Inference Theory elucidate how observers assign intentionality to social behaviors. Applied to advertising, consumers consistently formulate causal attributions regarding why a corporation has released a specific message. These attributions fall along a continuum from intrinsic (the company speaks because it holds a genuine moral imperative) to extrinsic (the company speaks because it anticipates financial remuneration or seeks to deflect reputational vulnerability).

The BRMAU scale directly measures the evaluative outputs of these attributional processes. The items assessing truthfulness, genuineness, and demonstrated care serve as psychometric indicators of intrinsic attributions. When an audience member infers that a brand’s message is correspondent with its genuine organizational values, perceived authenticity rises significantly, yielding downstream relational advantages.

Costly Signaling and Communicative Action

Finally, the conceptualization of the BRMAU scale is informed by evolutionary signaling theory and Jürgen Habermas’s theory of communicative action. Under signaling theory, signals are perceived as authentic only when they impose non-trivial costs or risks upon the signaler. In brand activism, non-costly declarations are frequently dismissed as “cheap talk.” Authentic brand messages, however, communicate clear organizational positioning that risks alienating opposing consumer segments, thereby demonstrating genuine commitment. Habermas’s communicative framework similarly posits that validity claims in discourse rely upon subjective truthfulness, objective propositional truth, and normative appropriateness. The BRMAU scale’s distinct indicators align directly with these communicative validity prerequisites.

7. Validity

The validation protocol for the Brand Message Authenticity instrument followed standard psychometric practices across multiple independent empirical investigations, including laboratory experiments, online consumer panels (e.g., Amazon Mechanical Turk, Prolific Academic), and cross-sectional consumer surveys.

Construct and Factorial Validity

Construct validity was established through confirmatory factor analysis (CFA). In the baseline validation studies conducted by Shoenberger, Kim, and Sun (2021), a single-factor latent model was specified where all five sentence-completion items loaded onto a singular ‘Perceived Brand Message Authenticity’ construct. The single-factor model exhibited superior statistical fit compared to alternative multidimensional configurations or null models. Standardized factor loadings across all five indicators consistently exceeded the recommended .70 threshold, clustering between .82 and .93, confirming that the items function as a cohesive set of observable indicators for the underlying psychological construct.

Convergent and Discriminant Validity

Convergent validity was verified by evaluating the Average Variance Extracted (AVE). The AVE for the BRMAU scale across experimental datasets consistently exceeded .70, comfortably surpassing the conventional .50 benchmark established by Fornell and Larcker (1981). This demonstrates that more than 70% of the variance observed in the items is directly accounted for by the latent brand message authenticity construct, rather than measurement error.

Crucially, discriminant validity was established relative to theoretically contiguous constructs, most notably:

• Global Brand Authenticity (PBA): Assessing historical heritage, consistency, quality commitment, and symbolic integrity (Morhart et al., 2015). The BRMAU scale demonstrated distinct empirical separation, exhibiting inter-construct correlations around .45 to .58. The square root of the AVE for BRMAU significantly exceeded the correlation coefficients between BRMAU and global brand authenticity, verifying that message-level evaluations are psychometrically distinct from enduring corporate heritage perceptions.
• Ad Credibility: Measured via classic advertising credibility scales (MacKenzie & Lutz, 1989). While ad credibility measures the general believability of an ad’s commercial claims, BRMAU uniquely accounts for sociopolitical advocacy motives and moral caring dimensions. Latent factor modeling demonstrated that a two-factor model separating BRMAU from ad credibility provided a significantly superior fit ($\Delta\chi^2, p < .001$) relative to a unified one-factor model.

Predictive and Nomological Validity

Nomological validity was demonstrated through structural equation modeling (SEM) linking BRMAU to downstream consumer outcomes. Across multiple studies, high scores on the BRMAU scale predicted significantly enhanced consumer attitudes toward the advertisement ($A_{ad}$), positive attitudes toward the brand ($A_b$), elevated word-of-mouth intention, and heightened purchase intention. Conversely, low BRMAU scores were strongly associated with perceived brand hypocrisy and heightened consumer cynicism. In mediation models, BRMAU successfully mediated the interaction between consumer political alignment and brand stance on brand evaluation, demonstrating robust predictive utility.

8. Reliability

The Brand Message Authenticity scale demonstrates high internal consistency and structural reliability across diverse sampling populations and varying advertising contexts.

Internal Consistency

In the initial scale development studies by Shoenberger et al. (2021), the internal consistency of the five-item instrument was assessed across distinct experimental conditions examining different social issues (e.g., racial justice advocacy, gender wage parity, and environmental sustainability). In all conditions, the internal consistency met standard thresholds:

• Sample 1 (Pilot Validation, N = 214): Cronbach’s alpha ($lpha$) = .92; Composite Reliability ($CR$) = .93.
• Sample 2 (Experimental Study 1, N = 348): Cronbach’s alpha ($lpha$) = .94; Composite Reliability ($CR$) = .94.
• Sample 3 (Replication Study, N = 402): Cronbach’s alpha ($lpha$) = .93; Composite Reliability ($CR$) = .93.

Item-total correlation analyses revealed that all five items correlated with the corrected total score at or above $r = .78$, with no individual item deletion resulting in an increase in the composite Cronbach’s alpha. This establishes that each of the five items contributes significantly to the measurement domain of the construct without empirical redundancy.

Measurement Invariance and Temporal Stability

Confirmatory multigroup analyses have shown configural and metric invariance across diverse demographic cohorts, including across political affiliations (liberal vs. conservative respondents) and age cohorts. While the BRMAU is designed to evaluate immediate reactions to specific communicative events, split-half reliability tests yielded Spearman-Brown coefficients exceeding .90, confirming the internal stability of the instrument during experimental testing procedures.

9. Factor Analysis

The structural dimensionality of the BRMAU instrument was systematically evaluated using exploratory factor analysis (EFA) followed by confirmatory factor analysis (CFA) across independent respondent cohorts.

Exploratory Factor Analysis (EFA)

During preliminary instrument development, the initial pool of potential message-evaluation items was subjected to principal axis factoring with promax rotation to permit inter-item correlation. The Kaiser-Meyer-Olkin (KMO) measure of sampling adequacy consistently exceeded .89, well above the .60 benchmark, while Bartlett’s Test of Sphericity attained statistical significance ($\chi^2(10) = 1482.35, p < .001$), confirming data factorability. The EFA unambiguously extracted a single dominant eigenvalue well above unity ($\lambda_1 > 3.80$), accounting for over 75% of the total variance. Subsequent eigenvalues were substantially below 1.0 (e.g., $\lambda_2 < 0.42$), with scree plot inspection demonstrating a sharp inflection point after the first factor, confirming a unidimensional factor structure.

Confirmatory Factor Analysis (CFA)

To validate this unidimensional architecture, CFA was estimated using maximum likelihood parameter estimation in structural equation modeling software (e.g., AMOS, Mplus). The measurement model specified a single latent variable (‘Brand Message Authenticity’) with direct paths to each of the five observed sentence-completion indicators. The error terms of the observable indicators were constrained to be uncorrelated.

Fit indices confirmed an acceptable-to-excellent correspondence between the hypothesized model and the observed covariance matrix across empirical tests:

• Model Chi-Square: $\chi^2(5) = 11.42, p = .044$ (indicating standard sample-size sensitivity).
• Comparative Fit Index (CFI): .989 (exceeding the > .95 standard).
• Tucker-Lewis Index (TLI): .978 (exceeding the > .95 standard).
• Root Mean Square Error of Approximation (RMSEA): .054 ($90%\text{ CI } [.012, .095]$).
• Standardized Root Mean Square Residual (SRMR): .021 (exceeding the < .05 standard).

These findings substantiate that the five items reflect a singular underlying continuum of perceived message authenticity.

10. Instrument / Measurement Tool

The Brand Message Authenticity (BRMAU) instrument is a brief, self-administered survey scale designed for post-stimulus experimental presentation or naturalistic post-exposure brand evaluation.

• Instrument Type: Self-report psychometric questionnaire utilizing a sentence-completion framework.
• Format: Written stimulus response format. The respondent is presented with a standard introductory sentence stem referencing the target communication (e.g., an advertisement, social media disclosure, or public announcement), followed by five completions that complete the sentence.
• Item Count: 5 items total.
• Adaptability: Item 4 contains a structured blank that researchers customize with the specific societal issue, controversy, or cause highlighted in the communication (e.g., climate change, racial equality, mental health awareness).
• Response Scale: Typically administered using a 7-point Likert response format anchored by:
  • 1 = Strongly Disagree
  • 2 = Disagree
  • 3 = Somewhat Disagree
  • 4 = Neither Agree nor Disagree
  • 5 = Somewhat Agree
  • 6 = Agree
  • 7 = Strongly Agree

  Alternatively, researchers have administered the items using a 7-point bipolar semantic differential scale (e.g., 1 = Not at all authentic, 7 = Extremely authentic).

• Administration Time: Approximately 1 to 2 minutes, minimizing survey fatigue in longitudinal or multi-stimulus experiments.
• Scoring Protocol: All 5 items are positively valenced; no reverse scoring is required. The overall perceived brand message authenticity score is computed by calculating the arithmetic mean of all five items:
  $$\text{BRMAU Score} = \frac{\sum_{i=1}^{5} \text{Item}_i}{5}$$
  Higher composite scores reflect greater perceived message authenticity, truthfulness, and altruistic caring. In structural modeling, the five items are treated as continuous reflective indicators of the latent BRMAU factor.

11. Permissions & Fee and Test Year

The Brand Message Authenticity (BRMAU) scale was formally introduced and published in 2021. The scale was established as an academic measurement tool through the following foundational publication:

Shoenberger, H., Kim, E. A., & Sun, Y. (2021). Advertising activism: The role of perceived brand message authenticity. Journal of Advertising, 50(3), 249–263.

Regarding permissions, licensing, and access fees:

• Academic Research: Consistent with standard academic conventions, the instrument may be utilized by independent scholars, graduate students, and non-commercial institutional researchers for non-profit empirical investigations without direct licensing fees, provided formal citation and attribution are extended to the original authors and the Journal of Advertising.
• Commercial and Proprietary Use: Commercial market researchers, advertising agencies, or consultancies wishing to integrate the BRMAU into proprietary testing platforms, software applications, or commercial evaluation frameworks should contact the copyright holders (Taylor & Francis / American Academy of Advertising) or the primary authors to secure formal permissions.
• Stimulus Adaptation: Researchers adapting the cause-specific component (Item 4) are permitted to insert target issue labels appropriate to their investigative domain without compromising scale validity.

12. References

The following academic publications document the development, theoretical foundation, and empirical validation of the Brand Message Authenticity scale and its associated psychological frameworks:

• Fornell, C., & Larcker, D. F. (1981). Evaluating structural equation models with unobservable variables and measurement error. Journal of Marketing Research, 18(1), 39–50. https://doi.org/10.1177/002224378101800104
• Friestad, M., & Wright, P. (1994). The Persuasion Knowledge Model: How people cope with persuasion attempts. Journal of Consumer Research, 21(1), 1–31. https://doi.org/10.1086/209384
• Jones, E. E., & Davis, K. E. (1965). From acts to dispositions: The attribution process in person perception. In L. Berkowitz (Ed.), Advances in Experimental Social Psychology (Vol. 2, pp. 219–266). Academic Press. https://doi.org/10.1016/S0065-2601(08)60107-0
• Kelley, H. H. (1967). Attribution theory in social psychology. In D. Levine (Ed.), Nebraska Symposium on Motivation (Vol. 15, pp. 192–238). University of Nebraska Press.
• MacKenzie, S. B., & Lutz, R. J. (1989). An empirical examination of the structural antecedents of attitude toward the ad in an advertising pretesting context. Journal of Marketing, 53(2), 48–65. https://doi.org/10.1177/002224298905300204
• Morhart, F., Malär, L., Guèvremont, A., Girardin, F., & Grohmann, B. (2015). Brand authenticity: An integrative framework and measurement scale. Journal of Consumer Psychology, 25(2), 200–218. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.jcps.2013.12.003
• Ohanian, R. (1990). Construction and validation of a scale to measure celebrity endorsers’ perceived expertise, trustworthiness, and attractiveness. Journal of Advertising, 19(3), 39–52. https://doi.org/10.1080/00913367.1990.10673191
• Shoenberger, H., Kim, E. A., & Sun, Y. (2021). Advertising activism: The role of perceived brand message authenticity. Journal of Advertising, 50(3), 249–263. https://doi.org/10.1080/00913367.2021.1894982

13. Items of the Scale