The Use of Vivid Stimuli to Enhance Comprehension of the Content of Product Warning Messages

Thousands of consumers are injured annually using consumer products. It is intuitively plausible that vivid product warnings may improve communication of the hazards associated with product use, yet vividness effects have been difficult to demonstrate empirically. Vivid product warnings are shown to increase accurate memory of the hazards associated with product use by enhancing cognitive elaboration on the content of a product warning message. Moreover, vivid product warnings may not, in and of themselves, generate negative elaborations regarding the safety of the product in question.     

Harmonization of product information for child-care products

Abstract

This paper gives an overview of the prenormative research that has been conducted to achieve harmonization of product information for child-care products. This research supports the work of a project group of the European Committee for Standardization (CEN/TC 252/WG 6/PG 5). The project group is preparing a chapter on product information requirements for a CEN report on the safety of children's products. In the first study, the product information currently provided with child-care products was studied. In the second study, the following was drawn up: two lists of requirements, one for the legibility and one for the understandability of product information, a warning grammar, and a basic set of explicit warnings against the most frequent and severe hazards. In the third study, the effectiveness of explicit warnings for child-care products was investigated. The results of this study indicate that people perceive products with explicit warnings as more hazardous and the possible injuries in case of an accident as more severe. In a fourth study, warning symbols were designed for a number of warnings of the basic set. Future research will focus on testing the combination of warnings and symbols for child-care products for com-prehensibility in a number of European countries.     

Do Plain Packaging and Pictorial Warnings Affect Smokers' and Non‐Smokers' Behavioral Intentions?

This research considers how tobacco warnings, plain packaging, and interactions between these measures affect behavioral intentions. While existing literature shows the superiority of pictorial warning labels (PWLs ) vs. text‐only tobacco warnings, few studies have examined the interaction effects of warnings and plain packaging on smoking intentions. Nor has earlier work examined the influence of smoking status (smoker vs. non‐smoker) on both warning and plain packaging effectiveness. Our experimental study addressed this gap by surveying 338 individuals using a factorial design with two manipulated factors (PWLs vs. text‐only warnings; plain pack vs. current branded tobacco pack). Results show that the plain pack and warnings work independently and in unison to influence smokers' and non‐smokers' behavioral intentions. The findings are particularly relevant to the many countries currently considering plain packaging and facing opposition from tobacco companies.     

The young and the reckless: Social and physical warning messages reduce dangerous driving behavior in a simulator

Road accidents are mostly avoidable and young males seem to be the group most prone to adopt dangerous driving behavior. Many efforts have been made to specifically target this group using two different kinds of warning messages: social and physical warnings. The relative effectiveness of these warning messages has never been compared directly, and their direct effectiveness has never been assessed in a realistic driving simulator to observe possible immediate changes in behavior while driving. Fifty young Israeli drivers (27 women) performed a driving task in a life-size driving simulator before and after watching either a physical or a social warning message. We compared the subject's driving behavior in terms of collisions, speed excesses, and non-compliance with traffic lights before and after watching the warning videos. We show that physical and social warning messages both had an immediate positive influence on reckless driving behavior in a realistic driving scenario, and that viewing the social video had a greater impact on men than on women. Our results indicate that both kinds of warning messages are effective in immediately reducing reckless driving behavior, but that publicity campaigns targeting specifically young males would benefit from developing social warning messages.     

Improving product instruction compliance: “If you tell me why,I might comply”

Although prior research into product instructions has been limited to investigating the effect of warnings such that people might avoid possible product dangers by heeding warnings, this research considers methods of improving consumer product instruction compliance when noncompliance with a product instruction does not necessarily lead to a hazardous situation. In particular, this research investigates the impact of providing instructions that specify the process by which compliance with the instructions will lead to the desired end state (e.g., product outcome), called process‐cause information. The results of a first field experiment indicate that intention to comply with product instructions is enhanced when people are told how compliance with the instructions will lead to the desired outcome (i.e., when process‐cause information is included in a product instruction). This finding is substantiated by results of a follow‐up laboratory experiment where subject compliance with an instruction‐based behavior was observed. The importance of the present research is discussed in terms of the potential impacts on customer satisfaction, service recovery, product returns, product liability, and warranties. © 2004 Wiley Periodicals.     

Cognitive competence of older consumers

Older adult memory performance declines with age. However, memory for newly learned material is only one measure of cognitive competence. This article reviews research that measured older adult cognitive performance using tasks that tap crystallized abilities, everyday problem solving, and those that used older expert subjects. The results indicate that many cognitive functions remain stable from middle age onward. This suggests that cognitive decline is not an inevitable result of aging per se. This implies that antecedents of cognitive decline, such as health, should be used as a segmentation variable for the older adult market. © 1995 John Wiley & Sons, Inc.     

Exploring the influence of customers' time horizon perspectives on the satisfaction–loyalty link

Anecdotal evidence suggests that older individuals behave more emotionally and less cognitively due to their decreasing biological, cognitive, and/or social abilities, or a combination thereof. However, in the psychology and aging literatures, recent research indicates that the sense of future time is a better predictor of consumer perceptions, attitudes, and behaviors than chronological age. Tying in with these research streams, this paper introduces individuals' future time perspective (FTP) as a moderator of the well-known satisfaction–loyalty relationship. More precisely, this paper demonstrates that FTP influences the satisfaction–loyalty relationship by (1) driving customer loyalty, and (2) moderating the relationship between these two constructs. Besides contributing an important concept to the business research literature, the findings provide evidence that explains the previous heterogeneous results of chronological age-related research. This concept allows for a more nuanced analysis of aging's impact on the perceptions, attitudes, and behaviors of consumers.     

Counter‐stereotypical products: Barriers to their adoption and strategies to overcome them

Counter‐stereotypical products (CSPs) are targeted at groups that are opposite to the stereotypical users of these products (e.g., face‐cream for men, construction tools for women). Such products entail adoption barriers, as they are associated with a dissociative out‐group (e.g., men avoid products used by women). A theoretical framework is developed to investigate such barriers by outlining consumers’ cognitive and affective responses to CSPs; namely: stereotyping (CSP is considered appropriate only for the stereotypical user group), subtyping/subgrouping (CSP is useful for certain individuals or subgroups), and derogating (disparaging the CSP due to a perceived threat to self). Study 1 verifies these responses and demonstrates their effect on the evaluation of CSPs targeting men versus women. Overall, CSPs targeting men faced more barriers than those targeting women, and this was especially so for publicly consumed CSPs (e.g., purse for men) as compared to privately consumed ones (e.g., hair‐remover for men). Study 2 examined the effect of a common marketing tool—product design color (e.g., using blue for men and pink for women)—in reducing the above barriers. It was found that blue is effective in reducing stereotype‐based barriers for CSPs targeting men. For CSPs targeting women, using pink was only effective for women scoring high on femininity, and it backfired for those scoring low on femininity.     

What information belongs in a warning?

A general approach is described for determining the information content of warnings. It begins with a formal analysis of the magnitudes of the risks arising from misuse (or even from proper use) of a product. It proceeds with structured, open-ended interviews intended to elicit consumers' naive conceptualizations of the processes creating and controlling those risks. Communications are then focused on information filling the most consequential gaps in their knowledge. The implementation of those warnings will depend on the extent of the knowledge gaps, and the opportunities for closing them. This approach allows for an estimate of the residual problems to be expected, if a warning program is implemented. It can also help to focus the policy debate over whether a product warning will achieve an acceptable level of misunderstanding. © 1998 John Wiley & Sons, Inc.     

Consumer choices under product option framing: Loss aversion principles or sensitivity to price differentials?

The effects of options framing can be theoretically explained by loss aversion principles as well as by potential alternative explanations (e.g., sensitivity to price differentials). This paper examines the interaction effects between option framing and two types of cognitive constraints (availability of cognitive resources and additional redundant product information) on consumer choices for adding or deleting optional product features. In the process, the research attempts to provide empirical support for one theoretical model (e.g., loss aversion principles) versus the other (e.g., sensitivity to price differentials). The results support the hypotheses that consumers choose a higher number of product options when starting from a fully loaded model than from a base model, and that this effect is magnified when consumers make choices under high cognitive constraints. In essence, the results empirically support the theoretical premise of the effects of option framing being driven by loss aversion principles than by diminished sensitivity to price differentials. © 2008 Wiley Periodicals, Inc.     

Adolescents’ Assessments of Advertisements for Unhealthy Food: an Example of Warning Labels for Soft Drinks

The potential of advertising to deceive young adolescents is problematic especially when it results in unhealthy food choices. Health warnings are supposed to raise awareness of the risky nature of a food product. However, these warnings compete for consumer’s attention with other advertising components set by marketers, such as product claims, visual frames, and images. To examine perception, attitudes, and behavioural intentions towards an ad, adolescents were exposed with fictitious soft drink advertisements in an experimental design. Hereby, we systematically varied warning labels and visual frames as key design elements of the advertisement. Results suggest that the effects of warnings on attitudes and purchase intention are mitigated by accompanying advertising elements. A single positive visual cue is sufficient to provoke purchase intentions. Overall, distraction from health warnings peaks in the youngest age groups and decreases with age. Findings raise concerns about how public health regulations on advertisements should be designed when the purpose is to inform especially younger adolescents of possible health risks. We discuss several implications for ethical marketing techniques of food products.     

Advertising Age Yearbook 1983. Covering the Events of 1982. Chicago: Crain Books, 1983, 320 pp. $34.95

Abstract

The use of highly attractive women in advertising is certainly popular, though support for their effectiveness is somewhat mixed (e.g., Bower and Landreth 2001; Caballero, Lumpkin, and Madden 1989; Caballero and Solomon 1984). Other research has established that some women experience negative affect by comparing themselves with these beautiful models (e.g., Irving 1990; Martin and Gentry 1997; Richins 1991). The present research extends prior undertakings by investigating whether the negative affect stemming from comparisons with these highly attractive models may have a negative impact on advertising effectiveness. The pattern of results from two studies indicates that, when sufficient negative affect is generated as a consequence of comparison with beautiful models, evaluations of both the model as a spokesperson and the product argument may be affected adversely because of model derogation. Given the significant effect that evaluations of spokesperson and product argument can have on product evaluations and intentions, the importance of this finding of model derogation is discussed.     

Context Effects on Older Consumers’ Cognitive Age: The Role of Hedonic versus Utilitarian Goals

This paper deals with older consumers’ cognitive age (i.e., the age they feel), which is self‐assessed as systematically lower than their chronological age (i.e., their actual age). Such a tendency would lead older consumers to display attitudes and purchasing behaviors, which are not typical of people of their real age. Two studies show that cognitive age is not an immutable construct but varies according to its context of reference, so that the same individual may feel different ages under different circumstances. Results demonstrate that the declared cognitive age is affected by the physical environment, the social references, and the product categories that the consumer is using when self‐assessing it. Furthermore, the tendency of older consumers to feel younger is stronger when these consumers are pursuing in these contexts hedonic rather than utilitarian goals. These findings provide novel inputs for the development of appropriate ways to measure cognitive age and to deal with it when targeting senior consumers and positioning hedonic versus utilitarian goods.     

The Relationship between task complexity and information search: The role of self‐efficacy

Prior research suggests the complexity of a product choice task is inversely related to the extent of consumers' external information search. The resource‐matching perspective holds that cognitive effort (e.g., external information search) is greatest when available cognitive resources (e.g., as determined by self‐efficacy) match the cognitive demands of a task (e.g., perceived task complexity). Within a brand‐choice context, the relationship between self‐efficacy and extent of information search appears nonmonotonic. In support of the resource‐matching perspective, consumers conduct the most extensive information search when their self‐efficacy matches perceived task difficulty. © 2007 Wiley Periodicals, Inc.     

A heuristic-systematic processing analysis of the effectiveness of product warning labels

In this article we present the heuristic-systematic model (Chaiken, 1980, 1987; Chaiken, Liberman, & Eagly, 1989) as a theoretical framework for research on product warning labels. The model proposes two fundamental information processing modes. When processing systematically, perceivers access, scrutinize, and integrate all useful information to reach their judgment. In contrast, heuristic processing involves the use of learned knowledge structures in the form of simple decision rules, or cognitive heuristics, to reach judgments. In addition to proposing when either or both of these processing modes will occur, and with what effect, the model also specifies three different underlying types of processing motivations, termed accuracy, defense, and impression, each with implications for information processing and judgments. This model is used to explain past findings on the effectiveness of product warning labels, and to suggest new areas for future research as well as practical guidelines for the design of warning labels. © 1998 John Wiley & Sons, Inc.     

The Effectiveness of Two Online Persuasion Claims: Limited Product Availability and Product Popularity

Two experiments were conducted to evaluate the effectiveness of two online persuasion claims: limited product availability (e.g., only 3 items left) and product popularity (e.g., 94% of consumers bought this product after viewing this site). The popularity claim appeared to enhance quality perception, particularly among highly risk-averse consumers, and purchase intention. We attribute these findings to the quality signaling effect and the bandwagon effect of the claim. On the other hand, the limited availability claim exerted no influence: low message credibility and the lack of psychological reactance are deemed to be possible reasons for the insignificant effect of the claim.     

Boomerang Effects in Response to Public Health Interventions: Some Unintended Consequences in the Alcoholic Beverage Market

Some warnings and other public health interventions have been found to produce effects opposite to those intended. Researchers employing a variety of methods have observed these boomerang effects in connection with interventions in a number of different contexts. One possible explanation for such boomerang effects lies in the theory of psychological reactance, roughly defined as the state of being aroused in opposition to perceived threats to personal choice. In particular, some consumer reactions described in research on alcoholic beverage warnings, alcohol education efforts, and the minimum drinking age can be concisely explained in terms of psychological reactance. An obvious implication is that boomerang effects should be taken into account as one of the potential costs of launching a mass communication campaign or requiring a warning. In some cases (such as warnings about the health effects of alcohol abuse) there may be so little to be gained in terms of improved consumer knowledge that the potential cost of oppositional attitudes or behavior should receive substantial attention in the evaluation of proposed and current interventions.     

From digital media influencers to celebrity endorsers: attributions drive endorser effectiveness

We propose that attributions about an endorser truly liking, using, or desiring a promoted product mediate the relationship between source and message factors and persuasion via endorsement. In this paper, we integrate the persuasion literature into a framework for examining endorser effectiveness via focus factors (e.g., involvement, cognitive load) that determine whether a consumer thinks carefully or superficially about a message, and lead consumers to rely on different source and message elements (e.g., source attractiveness, argument strength). These elements then influence attributional processing. Correspondent inferences about an endorser can lead to enhanced advertisement and brand attitudes, and spur either fleeting identification with the endorsement or more enduring internalization (Kelman, The Public Opinion Quarterly 25:57–78, 1961) of the endorser’s message as a consumer’s own. Implications of our framework and research directions are discussed.