Briana Anderson - Cornell University

Limitations
CHAPTER SIX
CONCLUSION
There are several limitations of this study. First, the sample is a relatively
young and female one, where 80% of the sample was female. This has a number of
implications. For one, a young audience may be more trusting of a cosmetics
company than a pharmaceutical company due to their age, i.e. college students,
especially females, will have more experience and knowledge of cosmetics companies
than pharmaceutical companies. This could possibly account for why, overall, the
cosmetics company received higher ratings of organizational credibility. Additionally,
the sample is heavily female, which skews results to a more female point of view.
Females might more readily trust cosmetics companies, are more likely concerned
with or personally involved with breast cancer research, and may make judgments
about a woman’s physical appearance differently than males. Thus, this may affect
the external validity of the study. Future studies could fix this problem by obtaining a
more representative sample.
Second, this study only examines pharmaceutical and cosmetics companies.
There are many different types of companies that engage in public relations, reputation
management and social responsibility activities. Additionally, the companies used in
the study are fictitious companies; it may be unrealistic or artificial to have no feelings
toward a company. However, for the sake of this study, it was beneficial that subjects
not have preconceived notions of the companies in the study since the study was more
concerned with the relationship of endorser to the organization (based on endorser
attractiveness and company type not an existing attitude toward company reputation).
Again, this may affect the external validity of the study in that only two types of
companies were examined and the results may not be generalizable to other industries.
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