Puff Games

Consumer researcher Alison Jing Xu on why we should read the orange juice carton twice.

Last month demo dirt covered the use of puffery in advertising; this month we secured a Q&A with one of the authors of the study that inspired that article, Alison Jing Xu, Ph.D candidate of Marketing at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign. Along with fellow researcher Robert S. Wyer, Jr., Jing studied the effects of puffery and prior consumer product knowledge on decision-making. Here are Jing’s responses to a few questions from demo dirt.

I am a consumer myself. I often encounter product information in advertisements and on product packages that I personally do not understand. Bob [Wyer} has similar experiences. As consumer researchers, we believe that there must be reasons for manufacturers to spend money to show us the information that we do not understand at all. What are the reasons? Does the presentation puffery always benefit sales? These questions lead us to investigate the conditions in which puffery may have a positive influence on consumers’ reactions to products and the conditions in which puffery may have a negative influence.   

What are examples of puffery in advertising?   

Puffery can be of different formats. It could be exaggerations about the status of the product, such as “National No.1” “We are the best!”. It could be information about “special” ingredients of the product or special techniques that are claimed to be used in production. An interesting example was provided by Consumer Report about ”100% Natural” “Home Made” orange juice that is also made “from concentration”. How could orange juice be both “100% natural” and “from concentration”?  Is the orange juice produced at someone’s home? Consumers will know the answer after a second thought. However, at the first glance, puffery makes products look very desirable.   

Are there some products for which puffery is more effective in advertising than others?  

We haven’t conducted a thorough investigation to compare the effectiveness of puffery for different product categories.   

What was the most surprising finding of your research?  

The most surprising finding is that consumers’ subjective perceptions about how much knowledge they have relative to others, rather than the knowledge they really have about the product category, drives how consumers make inferences about the implications of puffery. This subjective perception of knowledge could be easily influenced by situational factors. Another most interesting point is that when the ad appears in a popular magazine, puffery actually has a negative influence on high knowledge consumers who are frequent users of the category. Manufacturers must be disappointed to know this.