IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/a/eee/jbrese/v109y2020icp585-594.html
   My bibliography  Save this article

“The struggle isn't real”: How need for cognitive closure moderates inferences from disfluency

Author

Listed:
  • Wu, Ruomeng
  • Shah, Esta D.
  • Kardes, Frank R.

Abstract

Prior research suggests that disfluency leads to unfavorable product judgments and can be mitigated by debiasing techniques (i.e., explicit warnings about disfluency). We suggest a moderating role for the need for cognitive closure (NFCC), such that when information about a favorable brand is present, disfluency leads to less favorable judgments for low NFCC consumers but not for high NFCC consumers. Moreover, warnings about disfluency mitigate the negative effect for low NFCC consumers, but backfire for high NFCC ones. Across five experiments, we demonstrate these effects through individual trait differences and cognitive load manipulations of NFCC. We suggest that the backfiring effect among high NFCC consumers is due to shifts in attention away from brand reputation towards the experience of disfluency, making disfluency (vs. brand reputation) the primary judgmental cue. Implications of the findings for consumer inference are discussed.

Suggested Citation

  • Wu, Ruomeng & Shah, Esta D. & Kardes, Frank R., 2020. "“The struggle isn't real”: How need for cognitive closure moderates inferences from disfluency," Journal of Business Research, Elsevier, vol. 109(C), pages 585-594.
    • Handle: RePEc:eee:jbrese:v:109:y:2020:i:c:p:585-594
    DOI: 10.1016/j.jbusres.2019.03.042
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0148296319302255
    Download Restriction: Full text for ScienceDirect subscribers only
    File URL: https://libkey.io/10.1016/j.jbusres.2019.03.042?utm_source=ideas
    LibKey link: if access is restricted and if your library uses this service, LibKey will redirect you to where you can use your library subscription to access this item
    ---><---

    As the access to this document is restricted, you may want to search for a different version of it.

    References listed on IDEAS

    as
    1. Mosteller, Jill & Donthu, Naveen & Eroglu, Sevgin, 2014. "The fluent online shopping experience," Journal of Business Research, Elsevier, vol. 67(11), pages 2486-2493.
    2. Kardes, Frank R. & Posavac, Steven S. & Silvera, David & Cronley, Maria L. & Sanbonmatsu, David M. & Schertzer, Susan & Miller, Felicia & Herr, Paul M. & Chandrashekaran, Murali, 2006. "Debiasing omission neglect," Journal of Business Research, Elsevier, vol. 59(6), pages 786-792, June.
    3. Claire I. Tsai & Ann L. McGill, 2011. "No Pain, No Gain? How Fluency and Construal Level Affect Consumer Confidence," Journal of Consumer Research, Journal of Consumer Research Inc., vol. 37(5), pages 807-821.
    4. Hélène Deval & Susan P. Mantel & Frank R. Kardes & Steven S. Posavac, 2013. "How Naive Theories Drive Opposing Inferences from the Same Information," Journal of Consumer Research, Journal of Consumer Research Inc., vol. 39(6), pages 1185-1201.
    5. Renaud Lunardo & Dominique Roux & Damien Chaney, 2016. "The evoking power of servicescapes: Consumers' inferences of manipulative intent following service environment-driven evocations," Post-Print hal-02022176, HAL.
    6. Lunardo, Renaud & Roux, Dominique & Chaney, Damien, 2016. "The evoking power of servicescapes: Consumers' inferences of manipulative intent following service environment-driven evocations," Journal of Business Research, Elsevier, vol. 69(12), pages 6097-6105.
    7. Renaud Lunardo & Dominique Roux & Damien Chaney, 2016. "The evoking power of servicescapes: Consumers' inferences of manipulative intent following service environment-driven evocations," Post-Print hal-02047959, HAL.
    8. Doyle, John R. & Bottomley, Paul A., 2004. "Font appropriateness and brand choice," Journal of Business Research, Elsevier, vol. 57(8), pages 873-880, August.
    9. Joško Brakus, J. & Schmitt, Bernd H. & Zhang, Shi, 2014. "Experiential product attributes and preferences for new products: The role of processing fluency," Journal of Business Research, Elsevier, vol. 67(11), pages 2291-2298.
    10. Ian Skurnik & Carolyn Yoon & Denise C. Park & Norbert Schwarz, 2005. "How Warnings about False Claims Become Recommendations," Journal of Consumer Research, Journal of Consumer Research Inc., vol. 31(4), pages 713-724, March.
    Full references (including those not matched with items on IDEAS)

    Most related items

    These are the items that most often cite the same works as this one and are cited by the same works as this one.
    1. Lunardo, Renaud & Mouangue, Emilie, 2019. "Getting over discomfort in luxury brand stores: How pop-up stores affect perceptions of luxury, embarrassment, and store evaluations," Journal of Retailing and Consumer Services, Elsevier, vol. 49(C), pages 77-85.
    2. Bataoui, Soffien, 2022. "When e-commerce becomes more human by transposing the hospitality concept to merchant websites," Journal of Retailing and Consumer Services, Elsevier, vol. 65(C).
    3. Prithwiraj Mukherjee & Souvik Dutta & Arnaud De Bruyn, 2022. "Did clickbait crack the code on virality?," Journal of the Academy of Marketing Science, Springer, vol. 50(3), pages 482-502, May.
    4. Lunardo, Renaud & Alemany Oliver, Mathieu & Shepherd, Steven, 2023. "How believing in brand conspiracies shapes relationships with brands," Journal of Business Research, Elsevier, vol. 159(C).
    5. Northey, Gavin & Chan, Eugene Y., 2020. "Political conservatism and preference for (a)symmetric brand logos," Journal of Business Research, Elsevier, vol. 115(C), pages 149-159.
    6. Dong Hoo Kim & Doori Song, 2019. "Can brand experience shorten consumers’ psychological distance toward the brand? The effect of brand experience on consumers’ construal level," Journal of Brand Management, Palgrave Macmillan, vol. 26(3), pages 255-267, May.
    7. Ella Ward & Song Yang & Jenni Romaniuk & Virginia Beal, 2020. "Building a unique brand identity: measuring the relative ownership potential of brand identity element types," Journal of Brand Management, Palgrave Macmillan, vol. 27(4), pages 393-407, July.
    8. Strong, Carolyn A. & Martin, Brett A.S., 2014. "Effects of perspective taking and entitlement on consumers," Journal of Business Research, Elsevier, vol. 67(9), pages 1817-1823.
    9. Joerß, Tom & Hoffmann, Stefan & Mai, Robert & Akbar, Payam, 2021. "Digitalization as solution to environmental problems? When users rely on augmented reality-recommendation agents," Journal of Business Research, Elsevier, vol. 128(C), pages 510-523.
    10. Claire I. Tsai & Min Zhao & Dilip Soman, 2022. "Salient knowledge that others are also evaluating reduces judgment extremity," Journal of the Academy of Marketing Science, Springer, vol. 50(2), pages 366-387, March.
    11. Das, Gopal & Mukherjee, Amaradri & Smith, Ronn J., 2018. "The Perfect Fit: The Moderating Role of Selling Cues on Hedonic and Utilitarian Product Types," Journal of Retailing, Elsevier, vol. 94(2), pages 203-216.
    12. Duarte, Paulo & Costa e Silva, Susana & Ferreira, Margarida Bernardo, 2018. "How convenient is it? Delivering online shopping convenience to enhance customer satisfaction and encourage e-WOM," Journal of Retailing and Consumer Services, Elsevier, vol. 44(C), pages 161-169.
    13. Thomas Chambon & Ulysse Soulat & Jeanne Lallement & Jean-Loup Guillaume, 2023. "The effect of visual information complexity on urban mobility intention and behavior," Post-Print hal-04089291, HAL.
    14. Fan, Xiaojun & Chai, Zeli & Deng, Nianqi & Dong, Xuebing, 2020. "Adoption of augmented reality in online retailing and consumers’ product attitude: A cognitive perspective," Journal of Retailing and Consumer Services, Elsevier, vol. 53(C).
    15. Arpita Agnihotri & Saurabh Bhattacharya, 2017. "Corporate Name Change and the Market Valuation of Firms: Evidence from an Emerging Market," International Journal of the Economics of Business, Taylor & Francis Journals, vol. 24(1), pages 73-90, January.
    16. Krucien, Nicolas & Ryan, Mandy & Hermens, Frouke, 2017. "Visual attention in multi-attributes choices: What can eye-tracking tell us?," Journal of Economic Behavior & Organization, Elsevier, vol. 135(C), pages 251-267.
    17. Lambillotte, Laetitia & Magrofuoco, Nathan & Poncin, Ingrid & Vanderdonckt, Jean, 2022. "Enhancing playful customer experience with personalization," Journal of Retailing and Consumer Services, Elsevier, vol. 68(C).
    18. Mohamed Didi Alaoui, 2020. "L’effet d’adéquation entre la forme de présentation du prix et de la distance temporelle sur les réponses du consommateur : une approche par la théorie des niveaux de représentation," Post-Print hal-02870097, HAL.
    19. Michael Barone & Keith Lyle & Karen Winterich, 2015. "When deal depth doesn't matter: How handedness consistency influences consumer response to horizontal versus vertical price comparisons," Marketing Letters, Springer, vol. 26(2), pages 213-223, June.
    20. Jin Sun & Chen Chen & Junmei Lan, 2022. "Direct Expression or Indirect Transmission? An Empirical Research on the Impacts of Explicit and Implicit Appeals in Green Advertising," Sustainability, MDPI, vol. 14(23), pages 1-19, December.

    Corrections

    All material on this site has been provided by the respective publishers and authors. You can help correct errors and omissions. When requesting a correction, please mention this item's handle: RePEc:eee:jbrese:v:109:y:2020:i:c:p:585-594. See general information about how to correct material in RePEc.

    If you have authored this item and are not yet registered with RePEc, we encourage you to do it here. This allows to link your profile to this item. It also allows you to accept potential citations to this item that we are uncertain about.

    If CitEc recognized a bibliographic reference but did not link an item in RePEc to it, you can help with this form .

    If you know of missing items citing this one, you can help us creating those links by adding the relevant references in the same way as above, for each refering item. If you are a registered author of this item, you may also want to check the "citations" tab in your RePEc Author Service profile, as there may be some citations waiting for confirmation.

    For technical questions regarding this item, or to correct its authors, title, abstract, bibliographic or download information, contact: Catherine Liu (email available below). General contact details of provider: http://www.elsevier.com/locate/jbusres .

    Please note that corrections may take a couple of weeks to filter through the various RePEc services.

    IDEAS is a RePEc service. RePEc uses bibliographic data supplied by the respective publishers.