Placebo Effects of Marketing Actions: Consumers May Get What They Pay For

Abstract

). The authors thank Himanshu Mishra, Chris Taylor (parts of this research formed the basis of his honors thesis), and Monica Wadhwa for their help in administering the experiments and coding participants' responses. They also thank Eric Johnson, participants of the Distinguished Scholars Retreat at the University of Alberta, and the three anonymous JMR reviewers for their comments and suggestions. We dedicate this article to the late Dick Wittink for his exceptional guidance and encouragement. May he rest in peace.Editor's note: In contrast to other lead articles that were invited by former editor Dick Wittink, this article is based on a regular submission.

Consumer Choice and Autonomy in the Age of Artificial Intelligence and Big Data

“…Remarkably, a few months afterwards, those in the treatment group had lost more weight and had a lower blood pressure [21]. Reminiscent of other types of placebo responses [39,59], these results suggest that understanding of the modality and implications of an action can alter its physical consequences, and highlights the importance of communicating intent when designing public policies. This point has interesting implications for the design of customized policies and advertisements: it is more and more and more common for communications to be data-driven, and to target individual consumers based on their past purchases or browsing history.…”

Anthropomorphism in Advertising: The Effect of Anthropomorphic Product Demonstration on Consumer Purchase Intention

“…Previous research has shown that the way the message conveyed in ad affects consumer evaluation of the product (McQuarrie & Phillips, 2005;Peracchio & Meyers-Levy, 1994), consumer attitude toward the brand (Labroo et al, 2008;Arias-Bolzmann, Chakraborty, & Mowen, 2000), and consumer purchase intention (Putrevu & Lord, 1994). Consumer perceived product efficacy affects the consumption behaviour (Shiv et al, 2005), and the purchase intention (Cox et al, 2010). Thus, we expect consumer perceptions of the efficacy of the product in the ad will affect the purchase intention.…”

“…Study by Zhu, Billeter, and Inman (2012) shows that the image differences in an ad that informs about product efficacy affect the consumer's perceived product efficacy; the clearer the image ad provides information of a product efficacy, the higher the perceived product efficacy. Perception of the efficacy of the product as a measure of the effectiveness of the product has been used in research in the field of marketing (Shiv, Carmon, & Ariely, 2005;Cox, Cox, & Mantel, 2010). Thus if the benefits of the product are difficult to explain, the delivery of the product benefits message can be more familiar and easier to understand when it is presented with the help of an anthropomorphic behaviour.…”

Behavioural Economics, Neuroscience, and the Unfair Commercial Practises Directive

“…Studies have shown that a placebo effect can be triggered by, e.g., a higher price or just by the fact that other people want the same product ("hearding") or because we tend to repeat our own decisions ("self-hearding"; Ariely 2008; Shiv et al 2005). If behavioural economics and neuroscience are to be applied in marketing law, we also have to consider the consequences of placebo.…”