پردازش ادعاهای تبلیغات اغراق آمیز

Government policymakers allow advertisers to use wildly exaggerated, fanciful or vague claims for a product or service because they believe that nobody could possibly treat the claims seriously or be misled by them. The results demonstrate that although consumers are able to identify exaggerated claims as less credible than factual claims, their brand evaluations are inflated after exposure to exaggerated claims. The explanation is that during the process of comprehension, claims are accepted before being discredited. The temporary acceptance of the claim affects memory, even after the claim is understood as an exaggeration.

Is belief independent of comprehension? Descartes asserted that comprehension precedes, and is independent of, belief. As humans come into contact with claims or opinions, they comprehend them automatically, and then decide whether to accept or reject the information (Gilbert, 1991 and Gilbert et al., 1993). Spinoza, on the other hand, believed that comprehending and accepting were part of the same process. “According to Spinoza, the act of understanding is the act of believing. As such, people are incapable of withholding their acceptance of what they understand. They may indeed change their minds after accepting the assertions they comprehend, but they cannot stop their minds from being changed by the contact with those assertions” (Gilbert et al., 1993, p. 222). Why does the disagreement matter in marketing? Self-regulatory industry groups, such as the ASA in the United Kingdom and government regulatory bodies, such as the FTC in the United States and the ACCC in Australia, have created rules using Cartesian logic. Government policymakers allow advertisers to use puffery, defined as wildly exaggerated, fanciful or vague claims for a product or service, because they believe that nobody could possibly treat puffery seriously or be misled by it. Two critical assumptions underly the policy. First, consumers can identify puffed claims as not credible. Second, consumers will not incorporate a puffed claim into their evaluations or beliefs because they understand that the puffery is a ‘wild’ exaggeration. Although Cartesian logic is used by policymakers, empirical evidence supports Spinoza's view. Gilbert et al. (1993) show that interrupting the processing of false claims results in participants believing the claims to be truer. The disturbing implication of the findings by Gilbert et al. (1993) is that every encounter with misinformation or an exaggerated claim can potentially affect future behavior, even if the consumer realizes that the claim is false. The research presented here demonstrates that although consumers are able to identify an exaggerated claim as less credible, exposure to the puffed claim still shifts the evaluation of the brand to be more positive.

The results provide evidence that consumers are able to identify puffed claims as less credible, however, the claims are not judged to be not credible. Only 1 in 180 responses rated the puffed claim as 0 or “not at all credible.” This is counter to previous findings with the exception of Wyckham (1987) who found upwards of 80% of consumers stating that puffed claims were not true. One explanation is that the generalized puffed claims used here are less concrete and more difficult to discredit. More specific claims such as those used in Wyckham's study (1987) refer to a single attribute or benefit, allowing the consumer a better opportunity to mentally test its credibility. Even though consumers can identify a puffed claim as less credible, they still rated the brand more favorably than brands associated with a factual claim. The general finding, that puffery is deceptive because consumer beliefs do change after exposure to puffed claims, replicates a number of past studies (Holbrook, 1978, Kamins and Marks, 1987, Olson and Dover, 1978, Rotfeld and Rotzoll, 1980 and Wyckham, 1985) and supports assertions made in research review papers (i.e. Rotfeld and Preston, 1981). The explanation in previous research was that consumers believe the claims and generate inferences on the basis of the implied facts. No support is found here for these explanations. Consumers were able to identify puffery as less true and they did not generate inferences about the quality of food and service or the expense of the bistro/bar/cruise.