ABSTRACT

Research consistently finds that fluent stimuli in marketing communications are better liked and more trusted than more difficult to process stimuli. This paper describes four studies showing that the attitudes towards difficult-to-process stimuli increase significantly when compared to the easy-to-process stimuli, thus adding to the growing ‘disfluency’ literature. We show that attitudes increase towards a less fluent option when individuals misattribute the extra effort, spent in processing the information, to the decision making rather than the stimuli itself. The studies have important theoretical implications for understanding the mechanism by which lack of processing fluency influences attitude formation, and, have practical implications for understanding how and when to use disfluent stimuli in marketing communications.

摘要

研究一致发现，营销传播中流畅的刺激比难以处理的刺激更受欢迎，更受信任。本文描述了四项研究，表明与易于处理的刺激相比，对难以处理的刺激的态度显着增加，从而增加了日益增长的“不流畅”文献。我们表明，当个人将花费在处理信息上的额外努力错误地归因于决策而不是刺激本身时，对不太流畅的选项的态度就会增加。这些研究对于理解缺乏处理流畅性影响态度形成的机制具有重要的理论意义，并且对于理解如何以及何时在营销传播中使用不流畅的刺激具有实际意义。