A Study on the Relationships of Deceptive Advertising and Consumer Response

Seok, Dong Eop(Department of Business Administration Graduate School of Seoul National University

1. Introduction

It almost goes without saying that today's consumers are exposed to more deceptive advertising than ever before. This trend towards the increasing use of deception in advertising is evident upon even the most causal inspection of print and broadcast media. In general, advertisers use deceptive advertising as non-pricing appeals.

Advertising has a responsibility within our economic system and is a highly visible and important institution affecting many people. The most significant question pertaining to advertising regulation concerns deceptive advertising. If the information provided is misleading or deceptive, then the responsibility of advertising in providing information for consumer decision making is not being fulfilled.

But despite the effect of deceptive advertising and its increased use, little research has been directed toward measuring the impact of such advertisements on consumer attention, attitude, and behavior.

The purpose of this study is to review theoretical bases for predicting and understanding the effect of deceptive advertisements, summarize the limited amount of research from marketing literatures, and evaluate communication effects of deceptive advertising empirically on Korean consumers.

II. Conceptual Background on Deception in Advertising

1. Definition and Categories

Consumers have the right to obtain information that is not misleading and that does not claim too much. They also have the right to product packaging and labelling that is not deceptive. Few writers have attempted to define deception in advertising. Of those who have, their attempts fall into two categories: the act of deceiving by the advertiser, and the consumer's perception of the advertisement. Gardner, after reviewing the contributions of other consumer researcher on this topic, formulated the following definition of deception.

If an advertisement leaves the consumer with an impression and/or belief different from what would normally be expected if the consumer had reasonable knowledge, and that impression and/or belief is factually untrue or potentially misleading, then deception is said to exist.

He proposed three categories of deceptive advertising within this definition. They are unconscionable lie, claim-fact discrepancy, and claim-belief interaction. Aaker categorized deceptive advertising into ambiguous expression, material untruth, implicit misconception, and puffery. These categories focus on deception from the consumer's viewpoint.

2. Cues in Deceptive Advertising

A consumer frequently faces a purchase decision without adequate information concerning the extent to which a particular brand possesses certain characteristics. Under these conditions, the consumer may select a substitute cue as a means of evaluating a brand. Cohen called it a surrogate indicator. When the marketer designs surrogate indicators to suggest the existence of characteristics which the product does not in fact possess, the consumer may be misled into believing this product will satisfy his needs. Surrogate indicators whose use in some circumstances have been considered unacceptable are colors, symbols, endorsements, and magnitudes.

3. Conditions and Detecting Techniques

Based of the more rigorous conceptualization, the following necessary and sufficient conditions must apply in order for a particular advertising claim to deceive a particular consumer.

· The claim is attended to by the consumer.

· The claim or implication affects beliefs.

· The claim or implication is important.

· The important claim or implication becomes represented in long term memory.

· Behavior is influenced as a result of either the deceptive claim or the implication derived from the claim.

A consumer must pass through several stages before he is deceived.

The process is depicted in Figure 1.

Studies attempting to measure deception have one of two major approaches. The first approach is to measure deception by asking subjects if certain advertisements, claims, or situations are deceptive. The second approach is to measure advertising deception on the basis of brand attribute beliefs of consumer respondents. Literature shows that measuring deception by asking subjects whether certain advertisements or advertising claims are deceptive is inappropriate. Consumers who perceive an ad to be deceptive is inappropriate. Consumers who perceive an ad to be deceptive are not deceived by it.

Gardner suggested three kinds of detecting deception in advertising : Normative Belief Technique, Consumer Impression Technique, Expectation Screening Procedure. In addition to that, Armstrong, et al. Suggested the use of the Salient Belief Technique. Both use the measurement of brand attribute beliefs of respondents. Conceptually, the normative belief technique suggests that the standard against which allegedly deceptive ads can be judged is the set of attribute beliefs about a product category held by a representative group of knowledgeable consumers. This involves identifying the major functional attributes associated with a product class, measuring the normative brand beliefs about these attributes for the product class, and measuring the specific brand beliefs held by an consumer after exposure to the ad being studies. But, the salient belief technique suggests that deception occurs when consumers perceive and believe false claims either made or implied by an ad. This involves (1) identifying claims that relevant consumers perceive that the ad is making, (2) determining externally which of the claims are false, and (3) measuring the perceptions, beliefs, and saliences of a representative sample of consumers exposed to the ad.

4. Analytical Framework of Deceptive Advertising

The consumer is an active information processor who has limited information processing capacity. It is useful to find out how the consumer processes informations which are contained in advertising message. Engel, Kollat, and Blackwell suggested High-involvement and Low-involvement model on the basis of the concept of involvement. EKB model consists of several stages-- that is, exposure, attention, comprehension, yielding or acceptance, retention, memory, and so on. Among those stages, especially, the stage of yielding of acceptance is related to the cognitive responses. Three types of cognitive responses are supportarguments, counterarguments, and source derogations. The communication process model consists of several stages -- that is, sender, encoding, message, media, decoding, receiver, response, and feedback. We can call this model the macro communication model, but if we focus on the response stage, the response hierarchy models in advertising can be considered as micro communication models. Lavidge and Steiner, who summarized previous work in this area, proposed the response sequence with a six-stage model consisting of: awareness --> knowledge --> liking --> preference --> conviction -> purchase. This model was later labeled a hierarchy of effects by Palda. They were also the first to employ the summary labels of cognition, affect, and conation, to represent the advertising response sequence more efficiently. We used this hierarchy of effects to study consumers responses to the deceptive advertising.

We can combined the EKB's Low-Involvement Model, the Hierarchy of Effects Model, and the deception process into the Figure 2.

III. Theoretical Consideration

1. Experience in the Market

As noted before, communication theory suggests that different individuals can react to similar statements (words, symbols, pictures) in different ways. And socialization theory suggests that experience in the marketplace may be a major determinant of purchase behavior. Hence, the potential effect deceptive advertising has on consumer behavior warrants this study. Considering the shopping and purchase experience, senior consumers can react negatively to deceptive advertising -- that is, they prefer factual ads to deceptive or pufferous ads. They notice, like best, and are inclined to shop and purchase from stores that produce factual advertisements. But, adolescent and middle age consumers are more likely to be moved through the Hierarchy of Effects if advertising appeals are deceptive.

2. Selective Attention, Differential Threshold, Distraction Hypothesis

Consumers, allocate their attention on both a voluntary and involuntary basis. For voluntary attention, stimuli are deliberately focused on because of their relevance to the task at hand. Conversely, involuntary attention occurs when the consumer confronts novel or unexpected stimuli that seem interesting or distinctive in some way, even though they may be unrelated to the current goal or activity at hand. Certain characteristics of stimuli themselves attract attention. Deceptive advertising, in this regard, may draw consumer's attention.

Consumers have limited sensitivity for noticing differences between different stimulus values. The differential threshold defines this sensitivity as the smallest detectable difference between two values of the same stimulus. To measure the differential threshold for stimulus, one commonly change its intensity in very small amounts. The degree of intensity of the stimulus or the context in which the stimulus is presented will make the difference in consumer's perception of and reaction to deceptive advertising.

People counterargue with a message that contradicts their present beliefs and attitudes, thus impeding any change. Therefore, any strategy that serves to interfere with or reduce counterargumentation is worthy of consideration. One possible means is to distract the reader or viewer during exposure. This is especially applicable under high-involvement conditions when the individuals is opposed to the position being taken in the message.

IV. Summaries of Studies on the Effect of Deceptive Advertising

1. Unconscionable Lie

To be classified as deceptive in this category, an advertisement would make a claim that is completely false. There would be no way for consumers to achieve the claimed benefits.

2. Evaluative Advertising

Holbrook defined evaluative content as emotional, subjective, impressions of intangible aspects of the product. Products advertised with evaluative claims were just as likely to be selected as those advertised with directly asserted claims. Studies reveal that the experimental groups pre-trial intentions are significantly greater than the control group's post-trial intentions, suggesting that deceptive advertising does in fact affect purchase inclination.

3. Incomplete Comparisons

Incomplete comparative advertising is illustrated by such qualified advertising claims as "Brand X is better" and "Brand Y will get your dishes cleaner." The receiver of such claims must infer what brands X and Y are better than and with regard to what. Research offers empirical evidence that indicates that incomplete comparative statements elicit multiple plausible interpretations, some of which(or perhaps all of which)are potentially misleading.

4. Puffery

Puffery is advertising or other sales representations which praise the item sold with subjective claims, superlatives or exaggerations vaguely and generally, stating no specific facts. Research reveals that puffs are communicated to large number of respondents, and if false, will easily be seen as possessing a potential to deceive if they do not have special legal exemption from such consideration. Contrary to the logic behind this exemption, puffs are noted as true by large number of respondents, suggesting that respondents might have thought such claims were literally true. Puffery could therefore be influential in consumer decision making and purchase behavior, indicating that the law should not treat puffery as any different from other types of advertising claims.

V. Empirical Study on the Communication Effect of Deceptive Ad

1. Purpose

The purpose of the study is to see whether the deceptive advertising is more effective on the communication effect than the advertising using fact itself.

2. Methodology

Empirical measures of Deceptive Ad, Hierarchy of Effects, and certain demographic information were needed to test the hypotheses. The data used to develop these empirical measures were collected from three groups of interest : adolescent, middle age and senior consumers. A questionnaire was administered to 103 males and 117 females. The sampling technique used was stratified, systematic random sampling. Products used were medicine and toothpaste products. Ads for each product are chosen from print media, two using deceptive illustrations and headlines, the other focusing the fact itself.

Several item statements were used to measure the effectiveness of the advertisement. The items were chosen so as to tap all three components(cognitive, affective, conative)of an attitude. At the stage of analysis, the relations among the items were tested using Pearson's product-moment correlation and cognitive, affective, and conative responses were tested using ANOVA.

3. Results

The communication effects among three groups are significantly different. Especially, ads using deception have the communication effectiveness more than those focusing on fact only in cognitive component. But in the affective component, the ad using deception is scored similar and in the conative component, it is scored worse than factual ad. In other words, deceptive advertising shows no better effect on shopping and purchase behavior. What is more interesting is that adolescent and senior women with high-education level show more negative evaluations of the deceptive ads than factual advertising.

Considering the medicine product is high-involvement, Ads using deception in high-involvement product do not have communication effectiveness more than those in low-involvement product.

VI. Summary and Discussion

From reviewing the empirical study, we can see deceptive advertising can get attention and have effect on only cognitive response but have no effect on affective response and negative on conative response.

This is the first study on the effect of deceptive advertising in Korea. So it is premature to draw any decisive conclusion because we, the Korean are different from the Western in thoughts, values, and feelings. A large number of better designed follow-up studies are needed and research on the effect of deceptive advertising is not the problem to avoid any more.