Consumer Involvement and Deception from Implied Advertising Claims

Results from Experiment 1 reveal that consumers highly involved in processing an advertisement are likely to make invalid inferences from incomplete-comparison claims at the time of processing and, hence, be deceived. Less involved consumers may be induced to complete such claims at the time of measurement, which makes it appear that they also were deceived by the advertisement. Experiment 2 then demonstrates that deception depends on the processing demands of the advertising claim. Only less involved consumers are deceived by inconspicuous-qualification claims, which require detailed processing of the advertisement for non-deception. The author discusses the implications of these findings for advertisers and public policy.