Informative Promotional Claims and Authenticity: A study of COVID Highlights in Restaurants

Authenticity commonly refers to a key attribute of organizational identity and a source of competitive advantage. Promotional claims on attributes associated with authenticity, such as geographic place of origin or traditional production methods, have been identified as a potential successful strategy as they make consumers more aware about the organization’s authentic attributes. But organizations often have to communicate features not associated with authenticity including open hours and delivery services. In this paper we hypothesize and empirically study the effect of informative promotional claims on attributes not associated with authenticity on consumer perception of authenticity and on organizational performance. Drawing on a quantitative study of restaurants and taking advantage of a quasi-experiment in Yelp online reviews platform—new highlights launched in response to the pandemic about food pick-up and delivery services—we show that these informative promotional claims increase the popularity of restaurants making use of those claims, but paradoxically reduce their perceived authenticity. In addition, we show how the informative claims only improve restaurants performance when they are perceived as little authentic or inauthentic.