Not all communication styles are created equal: the differing effects of communicating the family business brand’s roots and virtues

Purpose: This study aims to examine the impact of communication style focusing on the family business brand’s roots and virtues on inferences of manipulative intent and willingness to pay a price premium, applying the persuasion knowledge model. Design/methodology/approach: This study collects data involving 337 participants from France and applies partial least squares structural equation modeling (PLS-SEM) to test the hypotheses. Findings: The results demonstrate that communication style plays an important role in inferences of manipulative intent: focusing on the family business brand’s virtues has a positive effect while focusing on the family business brand’s roots has a nonsignificant effect. In turn, inferences of manipulative intent have a negative and significant effect on willingness to pay a price premium. Furthermore, age does not moderate the effect of communication style focusing on the family restaurant brand’s roots and inferences of manipulative intent but positively moderates the effect of communication style focusing on the family restaurant brand’s virtues on inferences of manipulative intent. Originality/value: To the best of the authors’ knowledge, this study is the first to try to unpack the differing effects of communication styles in the context of family business brands. In this vein, it has insightful theoretical and managerial implications for family business brands.