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Puffery in Advertisements: The Effects of Media Context, Communication Norms, and Consumer Knowledge

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  • Alison Jing Xu
  • Robert S. Wyer

Abstract

Ads often contain puffery-product descriptions that purport to be important but actually provide little if any meaningful information. Consumers' reactions to these descriptions depend on whether they perceive themselves to be more or less knowledgeable about the product than others whom the ad is specifically intended to influence. When an ad appears in a professional magazine that is read primarily by experts in the product domain, puffery generally increases the ad's effectiveness. This is also true when the ad appears in a popular magazine but readers perceive themselves to know less about the product than consumers at large. If readers believe they know as much as or more than general consumers, however, puffery decreases the ad's effectiveness. In addition, the media context in which an ad is encountered has a direct effect on judgments by consumers who perceive themselves to have little knowledge about the type of product being advertised. (c) 2010 by JOURNAL OF CONSUMER RESEARCH, Inc..

Suggested Citation

  • Alison Jing Xu & Robert S. Wyer, 2010. "Puffery in Advertisements: The Effects of Media Context, Communication Norms, and Consumer Knowledge," Journal of Consumer Research, Journal of Consumer Research Inc., vol. 37(2), pages 329-343, August.
    • Handle: RePEc:oup:jconrs:v:37:y:2010:i:2:p:329-343
    DOI: 10.1086/651204
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    Cited by:

    1. Bram Foubert & Els Gijsbrechts, 2016. "Try It, You’ll Like It—Or Will You? The Perils of Early Free-Trial Promotions for High-Tech Service Adoption," Marketing Science, INFORMS, vol. 35(5), pages 810-826, September.
    2. Benedict G.C. Dellaert & Theo Arentze & Caspar G. Chorus & Harmen Oppewal & Geert Wets, 2013. "Workshop report: mental representations and discrete choice behaviour: state-of-the-art and avenues for future research," Chapters, in: Stephane Hess & Andrew Daly (ed.), Choice Modelling, chapter 5, pages 107-124, Edward Elgar Publishing.
    3. Hasford, Jonathan & Farmer, Adam, 2016. "Responsible you, despicable me: Contrasting competitor inferences from socially responsible behavior," Journal of Business Research, Elsevier, vol. 69(3), pages 1234-1241.
    4. Shane Timmons & Terence J. McElvaney & Peter D. Lunn, 2019. "An experiment for regulatory policy on broadband speed advertising," Journal of Behavioral Economics for Policy, Society for the Advancement of Behavioral Economics (SABE), vol. 3(2), pages 17-24, December.
    5. Cheng Yi & Zhenhui (Jack) Jiang & Xiuping Li & Xianghua Lu, 2019. "Leveraging User-Generated Content for Product Promotion: The Effects of Firm-Highlighted Reviews," Information Systems Research, INFORMS, vol. 30(3), pages 711-725, September.
    6. Xunyi Wang & Meiling Jiang & Wencui Han & Liangfei Qiu, 2022. "Do Emotions Sell? The Impact of Emotional Expressions on Sales in the Space‐Sharing Economy," Production and Operations Management, Production and Operations Management Society, vol. 31(1), pages 65-82, January.
    7. Ruomeng Wu & Esta D. Shah & Frank R. Kardes & Robert S. Wyer, 2020. "Technical nomenclature, everyday language, and consumer inference," Marketing Letters, Springer, vol. 31(2), pages 299-310, September.
    8. Scholz, Michael & Dorner, Verena & Schryen, Guido & Benlian, Alexander, 2017. "A configuration-based recommender system for supporting e-commerce decisions," European Journal of Operational Research, Elsevier, vol. 259(1), pages 205-215.
    9. Tran, Hai-Anh & Farrell, Andrew & Evanschitzky, Heiner & Nguyen, Bach & Ackfeldt, Anna-Lena, 2024. "Using affective content to promote high-involvement services on social media," Journal of Business Research, Elsevier, vol. 179(C).

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