PSEUDO-SCIENTIFIC JARGONS AND ADVERTISING PERSUASIVENESS

Himadri Roy Chaudhuri1 Globsyn Business School, Kolkata and Arnab Kumar Laha Indian Institute of Management, Ahmedabad

Corresponding Author: Prof. Arnab Kumar Laha, Wing 15, Indian Institute of Management, Vastrapur, Ahmedabad - 380015 Gujarat, India. E-mail : arnab@iimahd.ernet.in Phone : 91 79 2632 4947 Fax : 91 79 2630 6896
A part of this work was done when both the authors were on the faculty of Army Institute of Management, Kolkata (formerly National Institute of Management Calcutta)
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PSEUDO-SCIENTIFIC JARGONS AND ADVERTISING PERSUASIVENESS

ABSTRACT

In India, there has been a sudden increase in the use of pseudo-scientific jargon in product advertisements. In this paper we examine the role of pseudo-scientific jargons in advertising persuasiveness. A small experimental study is conducted in which one group is shown an advertisement containing a pseudo-scientific jargon while the other group is shown the same advertisement without the pseudoscientific jargon. It is found that the use of pseudo-scientific jargon does not significantly change the attitude towards the brand and purchase intentions.

Keywords & Phrases : Pseudo-scientific jargon, advertisement, persuasiveness

Introduction The critical importance of the words chosen in any form of marketing communication, including advertising, is beyond any doubt. The important impact of linguistic variables upon advertising copy has been reviewed by Percy and Rossiter (1980). In fact, study of these types of interrelationship among words, grammar or sentence is largely limited in advertising research literature (Lowrey, 1998). It is extremely important that the language components be evaluated in terms of their possible impact on comprehension of the intended message. It is well known that the components of the language and the way they are assembled influence how well a message is communicated (Percy, 1982). In advertising, it is entirely possible to remember and interpret the meaning of a message, yet not understand the communicator's intentthereby wasting the whole of the expensive and time consuming efforts. However, one of the difficulties in attempting to directly relate psycholinguistic principles to advertising effectiveness is the large number of potential interactions one must deal with; not only among conflicting psycholinguistic variables; but with other executional variables as well (Percy, 1982) Equally important is to determine just how effective a communication is likely to be. In this context, attention is paid to insuring that descriptions or attributes of the advertised product reflect those things most likely to be meaningful to the target segment.

A factor of vital importance for any advertisement is its ability to persuade the consumers. In the process of persuasion, comprehension is one of the important components. Thus to create perceived differences and, possibly, to enhance persuasive strengths, brands often use claims using some specific scientific jargons which, by and large, are quite uncommon to the ordinary consumers and often have no genuine scientific validity and for the purpose of the present study we denote them as pseudo-scientific jargon(PSJ). Examples of such advertisements are numerous in the Indian context like the Clinic Plus brand of shampoo uses the jargon of Protein Serum, Samsung brand of television uses the jargon of Bio-Rays, KeoKarpin brand of hair oil uses the jargon of Vitamin H etc. This seems to be a global phenomenon especially in case of highly technical products- content analysis study of print advertisements found that technical jargon is frequently used in advertising copy blocks (Meeds, 1998). We define these PSJs to be some abstract & often 2

scientifically unproven or loosely explained terminologies which are designed for and intended to deliver, to a non-technical consumer, a semantic representation of desirable product attribute and generate positive attitude. Though a limited literature (as cited in the next section) does exist, explaining the consequences of technical terms in case of largely technical products advertising, the effect on comprehension, persuasion and attitude formation process using PSJ route in non-technical advertising is largely uncertain.

Theoretical Background and Literature Survey

Earlier studies have highlighted the effectiveness of various linguistic characteristics namely, length of sentence (Wearing, 1973), active vs. passive sentences(Gough, 1966; Slobin, 1968), synonyms, antonyms (Anisfeld and Knapp, 1968; Grossman and Eagle, 1970; Kausler and Settle, 1973) etc. Nevertheless, the importance of technical terms in advertising also needs to be understood in its proper perspective and it appears that the concerned literature is somewhat limited.

Earlier some studies have found that participants have negative initial reactions to message complexity. Visual complexity (i.e., consisting of many heterogeneous elements arranged irregularly) has been shown to foster negative evaluations and these negative evaluations translate into negative attitudes toward the advertisement and brand (e.g., Cox & Cox, 1988; Saegert & Jellison, 1970; Smith & Dorfman, 1975; Thorson, Reeves, & Schleuder, 1985). Thorson et al. (1985) demonstrated that audio complexity was a detriment to attention to television messages. Complex syntax in advertising has been shown to require more processing effort (Lowrey, 1998) and to decrease recall (Bradley & Meeds, 2002). After summarizing several psycholinguistic findings regarding advertising effects, Percy (1988) concluded that, The point is, these often subtle cues in language can have significant impact on how advertising will be processed (p.273).

In an early study of technical words in advertising, Anderson and Jolson (1980) looked at how different versions of the same advertisement for a sophisticated camera affected subsequent attitudes. Greater technical content was found to decrease perceptions of the ease of using the camera and to increase perceptions of its cost. Nevertheless, technically expert or sophisticated consumers were found to be comfortable with the technical terms and reported higher levels of purchase interest. Technical words were especially effective on consumers with a high degree of technical experience & knowledge with the product, whereas ordinary consumers preferred the simple advertisements.

The explanation may lie in the fact that, when consumers had substantial product knowledge, technical terms may have made the advertisements appear more concrete. However, the terms had the opposite effect on consumers with low technical product knowledge, who are likely to be put off by pseudo-scientific jargon.

With this background in mind, we can propose our primary hypothesis as:

H1

: Introduction of a Pseudo-scientific jargon in a non-technical advertising context produces no change in the persuasiveness of the advertisement.

Description of the Study and Measurements Used

To the best of knowledge of the authors no study on the effectiveness of using PSJ has been carried out in the Indian context. The aim of the present paper is to present the findings of a multiple cross-sectional study on the persuasion effectiveness of the use of pseudoscientific jargons. We study the consumer reactions to the use of pseudo-scientific jargons in advertising and explicitly examine the advertisements persuasive strength in terms of attitude towards the brand, purchase intention and cognitive responses (Lowrey, 1998).

Attitude towards the brand represents feelings of liking or disliking of the brand being advertised, or a predisposition to respond in a consistently favorable or unfavorable manner

to a particular brand (Muehling and Laczniak, 1988). Purchase intentions are the subjective assessment of likelihood that the brand will be purchased (Lutz, Mackenzie, and Belch, 1983). Cognitive responses were used primarily because they can mirror the actual thoughts that occur to people as they evaluate a persuasive message (Wansink, Ray, and Batra, 1994) and are important indicators of attitude change (Greenwald, 1968 cited in Lowrey, 1998). Since earlier studies had indicated involvement is an important variable in explaining the mechanism of how advertising influences consumers (Petty, Cacioppo, and Schumann, 1983, Antil, 1984) we also included it in the study to determine whether it has a significant role in the present context.

To measure the constructs of interest, the questionnaire contained multiple-item which have demonstrated adequate reliability and validity. Product involvement was measured by the ten-item adjective scale, the Personal Involvement Inventory, described by Zaichkowsky (1987). Attitude towards the brand was measured by the three-item scale used by Muehling and Laczniak (1988). Purchase intentions were measured by the threeitem scale used by Gotlieb and Sarel (1988). So far as the cognitive response was concerned the subjects were asked to write down any thought that went through their mind while reading the advertisement (Wansink, Ray, and Batra, 1994)

The Methodology The present study was carried out on in two phases-- separately in 2003 and 2005 in the city of Kolkata, India and on two different yet socio-demographically identical sample groups of post-graduate students. Henceforth, these studies will be referred to as Study I and Study II. Sample sizes for the two studies are as follows: Study I Study II : : 168 100

Shampoo was selected as the product under study from a list of several other products based on the findings of a pilot survey which pointed to its nearly universal usage among the student community. This is in accordance with Yi's (1990) recommendation that 5

subjects should have some interest in the product so that they process the information given in the advertisement. A fictitious brand name of shampoo, "Actigel," was created to be featured in the advertisement. Two one page, black and white, print advertisements featuring the "Actigel" brand of shampoo were produced to be similar to advertisements for other existing real brands. The advertisement included a black and white photograph of a woman posing with bountiful hair. Some common problems of hair like, lack of bounce and manageability, etc. were highlighted.

(Insert Fig. 1 here)

Both the advertisements featured straight forward rational solutions (Maloney, 1961 cited in Kotler, 1996) to these common hair problems. However, the second advertisement

(Insert Fig. 2 here)

featured a fictitious hair nourishing agent----T MAR which was supposed to solve the above hair problems very effectively. Apart from the -T MAR factor the two advertisements were exactly identical in all other respects. A fictitious brand of shampoo was purposefully used in the advertisements to remove the effects of prior experience and attitudes toward existing brands and their advertisements.

The respondents were asked to look at the given advertisements and were then asked to fill out a questionnaire concerning the product and the advertisement. To make the advertisement appear to come from a real company, the subjects were given a short description about the new brand. The subjects were allowed to look at the advertisement at their own pace, but no interaction between participants was allowed (Lowrey, 1998). They were also asked to read the advertisement as if they were seeing it in a magazine or in a newspaper (Yi,1990). After they studied the advertisement they were asked to respond to questions as per the questionnaire.

Findings 6

Of the 168 students included in the Study I, 121 were male and 47 were female and in Study II 53 were female and 47 were male. The mean age of the group of students was 22.2 and 22.5 years respectively. The respondents were randomly divided into two groups the Control group who were shown a copy of the advertisement which did not include the -TMAR factor and the Treatment group who were shown a copy of the advertisement which included -T MAR factor.

Study I Study II

Male 72% 47%

Female 28% 53%

Control 52% 51%

Treatment 47% 49%

Table I: Descriptives of the Study I & II

The Cronbachs alpha values for the scales used in both the studies were found to be consistently high as: Involvement Brand Purchase Scale Attitude Intention Scale Scale .674 .735 .810 .804 .816 .867

Study I Study II

Table II : Cronbach Alpha Values of the Study I & II

We extend the primary hypothesis H1 to a couple of specific hypotheses as:

HA

-TMAR factor induces a change in attitude towards brand.

HB

-TMAR factor induces a change in purchase intention of the consumer.

To determine whether HA is supported by the data we tested the null hypothesis H0A : TMAR factor does not induce a change in attitude towards brand against the alternative hypothesis HA. The scale-values obtained by the three-item scale of Muehling and Laczniak (1988) were first subjected to a normal transformation, item-wise, using the Likerts category-scale method (Goon et. al. (1990)). This step is deemed necessary because assignment of arbitrary integers to ordered response categories has been found to be highly dubious and restrictive in application (Bechtel, 1985).

The transformed scores for the three-items were added to obtain the attitude towards brand score for each respondent. The two-sample t-test was applied on this data to test for H0A against HA. The value of the t-statistic is found to be 0.318 with p-value of 0.75. Since pvalue is greater than 0.05, H0A is not rejected at 5% level of significance. Hence we cannot conclude that -TMAR factor induces a favorable change in attitude towards brand. Similar observations are made in case of Study II also- the value of the t-statistic is found to be -0.144 with p-value of 0.88.

We carried out a similar procedure as above to determine whether HB is supported by the data. We tested the null hypothesis H0B : -T MAR factor does not induce a change in purchase intention of the consumer against the alternative hypothesis HB. The scale-values obtained by the three-item scale used by Gotlieb and Sarel (1988) were first subjected to a normal transformation item-wise using the Likerts category-scale method and then the transformed scores for the three-items were added to obtain the purchase intention score for each respondent. The two-sample t-test was applied on this data to test for H0B against HB. The value of the t-statistic is found to be 0.2 with p-value of 0.84. Since p-value is greater than 0.05 H0B is also not rejected at 5% level of significance. In case of Study II the findings are comparable with the value of t-statistic being -0.049 with p-value of .961. Hence we cannot conclude that -TMAR factor induces a change in purchase intention of the consumer.

We also examined the possibility that involvement might act as an intervening variable affecting brand attitude and purchase intention. Based on the available data 16 respondents

having high involvement scores (>4.0 after item-wise normal transformation and addition based on ten-item scale of Zaichkowsky (1987)) were considered). The results of the twosample t-tests for H0A against HA (t = -1.442, p-value = 0.171) and that for H0B against HB (t = -0.562, p-value = 0.58) were both not significant at 5% level of significance. In case of Study II , the results are equally insignificant with t= -0.828 / -0.640 , p-value =0.412 / 0.525.

Significant positive correlations (r = 0.517 / 0.553, p <.01) were noted between the attitude towards brand scores and purchase intention scores in both the studies. This is consistent with similar earlier findings of Lutz et al., (1983) and Mackenzie et al., (1986). A content analysis of cognitive responses were found to be neutral, revealing that the consumers appeared to have found hardly anything exciting about the fictitious compound present in the shampoo.

Discussion on Managerial Implication and Further Research

The findings of the present study indicate that the use of pseudo-scientific jargon may not significantly alter the attitude towards the brand and purchase intentions of the consumers. It can be reasonably assumed that consumers, particularly the educated middle class consumers, are aware that one of the purposes of advertising is to persuade them into purchasing the product. Consequently they are aware of the possibility that the advertisers have an incentive to exaggerate the characteristics of goods or services featured in the advertisement. This possibly makes such consumers inherently skeptical of the advertising claims and they will continually attempt to assess the veracity of the advertising claims. Moreover, the amount of information in advertising has been found to be varying directly with consumers' ability to verify advertising claims at reasonable cost prior to purchase (Nelson, 1970). Thus if the consumers cannot accurately assess the validity of claims prior to purchase or in the case of what is called experience goods (Nelson,1970 and Darby and Karni, 1973), manufacturers have a greater incentive to exaggerate and make unverified claims in their advertisements and consumers have less reason to believe the

advertisements (Ford, Smith, and Swasy,1988). In the context of the present study, since the claims made with respect to the -T MAR factor of the shampoo are not easily verifiable, it possibly have been ignored by the consumer particularly the ones with higher involvement.

It is known that words can be divided broadly into two categories: concrete and abstract. Concrete words are generally described as those which refer to objects, persons, places, or things that can be seen, heard, felt, smelled, or tasted. Abstract words refer to those things that cannot be experienced by our senses (Percy,1982). Concrete words are more effective than abstract words in communicating ideas. They are better remembered, tend to be more meaningful, and as a result better comprehended (Yuille and Paivio, 1969). A hypothesized reason is that concrete words tend to excite more visual imagery, and visualization enhances recall (Paivio, 1971, cited in Percy, 1982). In the present context the consumer may perceive the pseudo-scientific jargons as abstract words and may find difficult to comprehend. In the process the pseudo-scientific jargons may fail to communicate the intended message to the consumer. This may partially explain the failure of pseudoscientific jargon to change the attitude towards brand and purchase intention.

Although a jargon may be wholly known or wholly unknown by part of the audience, many readers bring prior-knowledge (even they may be partial) to the advertisement-- such as product category knowledge and product-related experience (Alba & Hutchinson, 1987) and which have implications for their responses to advertisements. Accordingly consumers with varying degrees of product knowledge should possess different abilities to process the language contained in advertisement.

As companies bring new products to market, they have a vested interest in the diffusion of information. They want knowledge about their product to make it into mainstream society.. Copywriters tendency for blanket-use of PSJ describing their products may actually yield no result. Even those people who are having higher level of involvement seem to remain indifferent to the jargon thrown in to the advertisement. This is particularly interesting in view of the prior findings that the consumers who are more involved are likely to be more

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knowledgeable and more interested (Flynn and Goldsmith, 1993) and are likely to pay more attention to an advertisement for a product in which they are interested (Greenwald and Leavitt, 1984). From information processing theory we know that when greater attention is directed towards an advertisement, greater levels of comprehension and elaboration of the information in the advertisement will result (Greenwald and Leavitt, 1984). Thus if the advertisements are trying to attract new consumers or even those with higher motivation to find out what make the product superior, then they are likely to have little effect if PSJs are used .

However, some recent psycholinguistic research indicates that people are able to understand complex vocabulary if provided with proper explanation (Shore & Kempe, 1999). Seldom do advertisers provide this kind of context with these jargons (Meeds, 1998) and as such its effectiveness in (specially) non-technical advertising is still not properly understood. So the inclusion of pseudo-scientific jargon might provide real benefits to the advertiser only if it is comprehensible. However, it might have adverse effects on consumers who are unable or unwilling to understand this language and this phenomenon needs to be adequately explored.

Concluding Remarks

The findings of the present study indicates that the use of pseudo-scientific jargons in advertising may not have significant effect either in terms of changing the attitude towards brand or in changing purchase intentions for middle class educated urban youth. Hence use of such pseudo-scientific jargons in advertisements serves no purpose for products which are targeted primarily to this segment of the population. We think that similar results will be obtained even for larger population groups like the educated middle class in India. It will be interesting to conduct a similar study to find out what effect, if any, these pseudoscientific jargons may have on individuals who belong to the less privileged classes in society and have little or no benefit of education in future.

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ACTIGEL shampoo is the ultimate solution for achieving best of both worlds - Bouncy and Healthy Hair!
Many a times you need to make a compromise among the choices you get. You might crave for getting best of both the worlds..but have to remain contended with what you have in the market. But now, no more adjustments! ACTIGEL is the ultimate solution for achieving the both- Bouncy and Healthy hair look. Actigel darkens each strand of hair uniformly from root to tip through intense moisturization, and makes hair look healthy and bouncy

ACTIGEL- the ultimate in the world of hair-care

Fig. 1

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ACTIGEL shampoo enriched with -TMAR vitamin is the ultimate solution for achieving best of both worlds - Bouncy and Healthy Hair!
Many a times you need to make a compromise among the choices you get. You might crave for getting best of both the worlds..but have to remain contended with what you have in the market. But now, no more adjustments! ACTIGEL is the ultimate solution for achieving both. Actigel enriched with TMAR Vitamin formula darkens each strand of hair uniformly from root to tip through intense moisturization, and makes hair look healthy and bouncy.

ACTIGEL- the ultimate in the world of hair-care

Fig. 2
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