3/29/2025

Chapter 4 4. Discussion and Conclusion

Executive Summary

This chapter synthesizes the theoretical and practical implications of the systematic review findings, presenting the Dual Pathways to Authenticity Model as a comprehensive framework for understanding how ambiguity affects authenticity perception in advertising. The discussion resolves the longstanding ambiguity-authenticity paradox by demonstrating that ambiguous messages can both enhance and undermine authenticity through distinct mechanisms determined by contextual factors, perceived intentions, and audience characteristics.

Key Theoretical Contribution: Dual Pathways Model

The central contribution of this review is the development of the Dual Pathways to Authenticity Model, which conceptualizes ambiguity as a meaning mechanism with two potential outcomes:

Foundation Mechanism: Ambiguity → Perceived intention → Authenticity evaluation

Pathway 1: Clarity-Oriented Authenticity

Triggered when consumers attribute negative intentions (evasion, manipulation, spin)
Ambiguity reduces perceived clarity, diagnosticity, or transparency
Results in diminished trust and lower authenticity
Dominant in high-stakes contexts, utilitarian products, and when factual transparency is expected

Pathway 2: Meaning-Oriented Authenticity

Triggered when consumers attribute positive intentions (thoughtfulness, moral nuance, inclusivity)
Ambiguity enables interpretive freedom, depth, and personal resonance
Results in enhanced authenticity through identity alignment and perceived sincerity
Dominant with symbolic/hedonic products, artistic brand voices, and meaning-seeking audiences

Theoretical Implications

This model advances theory in several significant ways:

Establishes Ambiguity as Systematic Construct: Moves ambiguity from stylistic feature to systematic construct in authenticity research
Incorporates Sociocultural Dimensions: Demonstrates how ambiguous messages function as inclusive signals for diverse audiences
Specifies Mechanisms: Identifies specific mechanisms (identity alignment, meaning-making depth, moral nuance) translating ambiguity to authenticity
Resolves Theoretical Contradictions: Explains why previous studies produced conflicting findings about ambiguity effects

Strategic Implications for Marketers

The findings provide clear guidance for when to deploy ambiguous versus ordinary messaging strategies:

Use Ambiguity When:

Product is symbolic, hedonic, experiential, or identity-driven
Brand voice aspires to creativity, artistry, or philosophical tone
Target audiences value interpretive effort or meaning-making
Communication must resonate across diverse or sensitive audiences
Topics require moral nuance or inclusive communication

Avoid Ambiguity When:

Consumers expect factual detail or high diagnosticity
Product is utilitarian or technical
Claims involve ethical, health, or environmental stakes
Ambiguity appears designed to obscure or manipulate
Clarity norms dominate the communication context

Contextual Moderators and Individual Differences

The model identifies key factors determining which pathway is activated:

Contextual Moderators:

Product category (symbolic vs. utilitarian)
Risk level and communication stakes
Cultural expectations and norms
Competitive context and category conventions

Individual Differences:

Need for Cognition (high NFC consumers appreciate interpretive complexity)
Cultural identity and subcultural awareness
Tolerance for ambiguity
Expertise and product involvement

Limitations and Methodological Constraints

Despite rigorous PRISMA-compliant methodology, several limitations must be acknowledged:

Limited Literature Base: Only 42 empirical studies examining ambiguous messages
Indirect Authenticity Measurement: Few studies measure authenticity directly, relying on proxies
Western Context Dominance: Limited cross-cultural validation
Methodological Fragmentation: Inconsistent approaches to defining and measuring ambiguity

Future Research Directions

The review identifies several promising avenues for future investigation:

Longitudinal Effects: Examining sustained effects of ambiguous messaging on brand equity development over time

Digital Contexts: Investigating how ambiguity functions in interactive social media environments where consumers can co-create meaning

Personal Branding: Exploring whether ambiguous slogans function differently for personal versus organizational branding

Cross-Cultural Validation: Testing whether identified mechanisms operate similarly across different cultural systems

Methodological Innovations: Employing neuroscientific approaches, mixed-methods integration, and digital trace analysis

Practical Applications and Decision Frameworks

The Dual Pathways Model provides marketers with a principled framework for communication strategy selection:

Decision Criteria:

Brand category assessment (symbolic vs. utilitarian)
Target audience analysis (meaning-seeking vs. clarity-seeking)
Competitive context evaluation (differentiation opportunities)
Communication objective alignment (persuasion vs. relationship building)

Implementation Guidelines:

Conduct pre-testing to determine likely interpretation frames
Monitor consumer responses to identify which pathway is activated
Adjust messaging based on contextual changes and audience feedback
Maintain consistency between brand voice and ambiguity strategy

Conclusion

This systematic literature review resolves the longstanding ambiguity-authenticity paradox by demonstrating that ambiguous advertising can both enhance and undermine authenticity depending on context, perceived intention, and consumer characteristics. The Dual Pathways to Authenticity Model provides the first integrated theoretical explanation for these divergent outcomes, offering a coherent framework that unites previously fragmented findings across marketing, linguistics, psychology, and communication.

By focusing exclusively on ambiguous-message studies, the review clarifies that authenticity does not arise solely from transparency or clarity. Instead, authenticity can emerge from interpretive freedom, depth, inclusiveness, and moral nuance—qualities often inherent in ambiguous communication. At the same time, ambiguity carries the risk of appearing evasive or deceptive, particularly in high-stakes or utilitarian contexts.

This review lays the conceptual foundation for future scholarship on linguistic creativity, consumer interpretation, and authenticity formation. By identifying the conditions under which ambiguity becomes a signal of depth rather than deception, the study advances both academic theory and practical understanding of one of advertising’s most complex rhetorical tools.

4.1. Interpretations of Key Findings

This systematic literature review clarifies the complex relationship between ambiguity and authenticity by demonstrating that ambiguous advertising cannot be classified as uniformly beneficial or uniformly harmful. Rather, the effect of ambiguity on authenticity is contingent, shaped by contextual expectations, interpretive demands, and consumers’ attributions of brand intention. One of the most important findings is that ambiguity produces two distinct authenticity mechanisms, both operating within ambiguous messaging. These mechanisms resolve the longstanding puzzle in the literature regarding why ambiguity sometimes reduces authenticity and sometimes enhances it.

The first mechanism—clarity-oriented authenticity—emerges when ambiguous messages reduce perceived clarity, diagnosticity, or transparency. Under these circumstances, ambiguity weakens authenticity because consumers interpret vagueness as a signal of evasion, manipulation, or lack of sincerity. This occurs especially in high-stakes contexts (e.g., health, climate, safety), utilitarian product categories, or situations where factual transparency is expected. In these contexts, ambiguity is understood not as creative complexity but as communicative failure or ethical risk. Thus, ambiguity leads consumers to infer lower trustworthiness, resulting in diminished authenticity.

By contrast, the second mechanism—meaning-oriented authenticity—shows that ambiguity can increase authenticity when it enables interpretive freedom, depth, and personal resonance. Many studies show that consumers perceive ambiguous messages as more meaningful, sophisticated, or sincere when they invite reflection, allow moral nuance, or facilitate identity-based interpretation. Ambiguity becomes a resource rather than a liability when audiences enjoy interpretive effort, when the brand’s voice is artistic or literary, or when the topic requires subtle, sensitive, or inclusive communication. Through this mechanism, ambiguity strengthens authenticity by aligning with personal identity, values, or cultural perspectives.

Together, these two mechanisms reveal that the authenticity of ambiguous messages is not the product of ambiguity itself but the interpretive frame through which ambiguity is processed. Ambiguity can damage authenticity when interpreted as deceptive, yet greatly enhance authenticity when interpreted as meaningful. This duality is one of the central contributions of the review.

4.2. Conceptual Framework

Building on these findings, this review proposes the Dual Pathways to Authenticity Model, a framework that conceptualizes ambiguity as a meaning mechanism with two potential outcomes. Unlike earlier thinking that positioned clarity as the sole route to authenticity, the present model shows that ambiguity can also generate authenticity—yet through different psychological processes.

The model posits the foundational mechanism of

Ambiguity → Perceived intention → Authenticity evaluation.

Here, perceived intention is the critical inflection point. When consumers attribute negative intentions to ambiguity—evasion, spin, manipulation—the clarity-oriented pathway dominates, lowering authenticity. When consumers attribute positive intentions—thoughtfulness, moral nuance, inclusivity, artistic expression—the meaning-oriented pathway prevails, enhancing authenticity.

Contextual moderators (e.g., product category, risk level, cultural expectations), as well as individual differences (e.g., Need for Cognition, cultural identity, tolerance for ambiguity), determine which pathway is activated. For instance, high NFC consumers often experience ambiguous messages as more authentic because they appreciate interpretive complexity, whereas low NFC consumers may interpret the same ambiguity as confusing or evasive.

This integrative model provides a theoretically grounded explanation for why ambiguity produces opposite authenticity outcomes in different settings and identifies the interpretive filters that transform similar stimuli into divergent authenticity judgments.

4.3. Theoretical Implications

The different mechanisms to authenticity model advances theory in several ways. First, it formally establishes ambiguity as a systematic construct in authenticity research, rather than a stylistic feature. Prior literature treated authenticity primarily as a function of clarity, transparency, or brand sincerity; the present model expands this view by showing that authenticity also emerges from interpretive engagement.

Second, the model incorporates sociocultural and political dimensions of ambiguity, demonstrating that ambiguous messages can function as inclusive signals for marginalized or diverse audience groups. Ambiguity allows different audiences to interpret a message in culturally resonant ways, which can enhance perceptions of sincerity and moral authenticity in identity-sensitive contexts.

Finally, the model articulates specific mechanisms—identity alignment, meaning-making depth, moral nuance—that translate ambiguity into authenticity, providing testable mechanisms and hypotheses for future empirical research. In doing so, the review moves the field toward an improved account of how consumers make sense of linguistic indeterminacy in advertising.

4.4. Strategic Implications

Even though this SLR focuses on theoretical contributions, the findings also offer strategic insights in marketing. Ambiguity should not be viewed as categorically beneficial or harmful; instead, marketers must deliberately select the appropriate pathway based on communication goals and context.

Ambiguity enhances authenticity when (1) the product is symbolic, hedonic, experiential, or identity-driven; (2) the brand voice aspires to creativity, artistry, or philosophical tone; (3) the audiences value interpretive effort or meaning-making; or (4) the communication must resonate across diverse or sensitive audiences. Under these conditions, ambiguity invites personal interpretation, fosters resonance, and can create deeper perceptions of sincerity and depth.

On the other hand, ambiguity damages authenticity when (1) consumers expect factual detail or high diagnosticity; (2) the product is utilitarian or technical; (3) the claims involve ethical, health, or environmental stakes; or (4) the ambiguity appears designed to obscure or manipulate. In such contexts, clarity, transparency are the primary routes to authenticity.

The review thus clarifies when ambiguity should be used and when it should be avoided, offering a principled framework for selecting communication strategies.

4.5. Limitations and Future Research Directions

Despite employing a rigorous PRISMA-compliant methodology, several limitations must be acknowledged. First, the literature base remains limited, with only 42 empirical studies examining ambiguous messages. The small sample size reflects the rarity of the specific topic and restricts the range of possible meta-analytic comparisons. Second, few studies measure authenticity directly; most rely on proxies such as sincerity, credibility, or trust. This indicates a need for more precise conceptualization and measurement tools. Researchers should also investigate ethical implications, such as the boundary between strategic ambiguity and deceptive communication, particularly in sustainability, political, and health-related messaging.

The systematic review identifies several promising directions for future research:

Longitudinal Effects: Current research predominantly examines immediate responses to ambiguous messages. Future studies should investigate longitudinal effects on brand equity development, examining whether authenticity advantages of ambiguity translate into sustained brand relationships over time (Beard et al., 2024).

Digital Context: Social media and interactive digital environments create new opportunities and challenges for ambiguous messaging. Research should examine how ambiguity functions in interactive contexts where consumers can seek clarification and co-create meaning in real-time (Shoenberger et al., 2025).

Personal Branding: Most existing research focuses on organizational branding. Future studies should explore whether ambiguous slogans function differently for personal branding contexts where authenticity perceptions operate through different mechanisms (Houston, 2022).

Cross-Cultural Validation: Current research predominantly reflects Western contexts and consumer populations. Cross-cultural validation is needed to examine whether identified mechanisms operate similarly across different cultural systems and linguistic traditions (Wilson & Liu, 2011).

4.6. Methodological Innovations Needed

To address these research questions, several methodological innovations are recommended:

Neuroscientific Approaches: Real-time measurement of cognitive processing through neuroimaging and biometric methods could provide deeper understanding of how ambiguous messages are processed and how this relates to authenticity perceptions (Beard et al., 2024).

Mixed-Methods Integration: Combining experimental methods with qualitative approaches could provide both causal evidence and deeper understanding of interpretive processes and meaning construction (Houston, 2022).

Digital Trace Analysis: Social media and digital platforms offer opportunities to examine natural responses to ambiguous messaging through large-scale behavioral data analysis, complementing controlled experimental findings (Chen et al., 2025).

Longitudinal Designs: Panel studies and brand tracking over extended periods could examine how ambiguous messaging strategies influence brand relationship development and authenticity perceptions over time.

4.7. Conclusion

This systematic literature review resolves the longstanding ambiguity–authenticity paradox by demonstrating that ambiguous advertising can both enhance and undermine authenticity, depending on context, perceived intention, and consumer characteristics. The Dual Pathways to Authenticity Model provides the first integrated theoretical explanation for these divergent outcomes, offering a coherent framework that unites previously fragmented findings across marketing, linguistics, psychology, and communication.

By focusing on a final dataset composed exclusively of ambiguous-message studies, the review clarifies that authenticity does not arise solely from transparency or clarity. Instead, authenticity can emerge from interpretive freedom, depth, inclusiveness, and moral nuance—qualities often inherent in ambiguous communication. At the same time, ambiguity carries the risk of appearing evasive or deceptive, particularly in high-stakes or utilitarian contexts.

Chapter 4

4. Discussion and Conclusion