Arnab Laha Pseudo Scientific Jargon Advertising Persuasiveness

8/3/2019 Arnab Laha Pseudo Scientific Jargon Advertising Persuasiveness

1/18

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 : [email protected]

Phone : 91 79 2632 4947

Fax : 91 79 2630 6896

1A 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)


2/181

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 pseudo-

scientific 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


3/182

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 quiteuncommon 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 inadvertising copy blocks (Meeds, 1998). We define these PSJs to be some abstract & often


4/183

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).


5/184

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 pseudo-

scientific 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


6/185

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 three-

item 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 samplegroups 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 : 168

Study II : 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 amongthe student community. This is in accordance with Yi's (1990) recommendation that


7/186

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


8/187

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.

Male Female Control Treatment

Study I 72% 28% 52% 47%

Study II 47% 53% 51% 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

Scale

Brand

Attitude

Scale

Purchase

Intention Scale

Study I .674 .735 .810

Study II .804 .816 .867

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.


9/188

To determine whetherHA is supported by the data we tested the null hypothesisH0A : -

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

againstHA. The value of the t-statistic is found to be 0.318 with p-value of 0.75. Since p-

value 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 ofStudy 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 hypothesisHB. 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 forH0BagainstHB.

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


10/189

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 two-

sample t-tests for H0A againstHA (t = -1.442, p-value = 0.171) and that for H0B againstHB

(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


11/1810

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 pseudo-

scientific 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


12/1811

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 pseudo-

scientific jargons may have on individuals who belong to the less privileged classes in

society and have little or no benefit of education in future.


13/1812

References:

Alba, J.W., and Hutchinson, J.W. (1987): Dimensions of Consumer Expertise, Journal of

Consumer Research, 13, 411454.

Anderson, R. E., and Jolson, M. A. (1980): Technical Wording in Advertisements:

Implications for Market Segmentation, Journal of Marketing, 44, 5766.

Anisfeld, N. and Knapp, N.E. (1968): "Association, Synonymity and Directionality

in False Recognition," Journal of Experimental Psychology, 77, pp 171-179.

Antil, J.H. (1984): Conceptualization and Operationalization of Involvement, Advances

in Consumer Research, 11, pp203-209.

Bechtel, G. Gordon (1985) : Generalizing the Rasch Model for Consumer Rating Scale,

Marketing Science, 4, 62-73.

Bradley, S. D., and Meeds, R. (2002): Surface-Structure Transformations And

Advertising Slogans: The Case For Moderate Syntactic Complexity. Psychology &

Marketing, 19, 595619.

Cox, D. S., and Cox, A. D. (1988):. What Does Familiarity Breed? Complexity as a

Moderator of Repetition Effects in Advertisement Evaluation, Journal of Consumer

Research, 15, 111116.

Darby, M. R. and Karni E (1973): "Free Competition and the Optimal Amount of Fraud,"

Journal of Law and Economics, 16 , pp 67-88.

Flynn, Leisa R., and Goldsmith, R. E. (1993): Models of Enduring Product Involvement

and Opinion Leadership, in Association of Marketing Theory and Practice Proceedings,

pp 378-386.


14/1813

Ford, G T.,. Smith, D. B,. Swasy, J. L(1988): An Empirical Test of The Search,

Experience and Credence Attributes Framework, Advances in Consumer Research 15, pp

239-244.

Goon, A.M., Gupta M.K., Dasgupta S(1990): Fundamentals of Statistics,, Vol I, pp311-

312 , World Press: Calcutta

Gotlieb, Jerry B., and Sarel, D(1988): Comparative Advertising Effectiveness: The Role

of Involvement and Source Credibility, Journal of Advertising, 20, pp 38-45.

Gough, P.B. (1966): "The Verification of Sentences: The Effect of Delay on Evidence and

Sentence Length," Journal of Verbal Learning and Verbal Behavior, 5, pp 492-496.

Greenwald, Anthony G., and Leavitt, C. (June 1984): Audience Involvement in

Advertising: Four Levels, Journal of Consumer Research, 11, pp 581-592.

Grossman, L. and Eagle, M. (1970): "Synonymity, Anonymity, and Association in False

Recognition Response, " Journal of Experimental Psychology, 83, pp 244248.

Hair, J.F., Anderson R.E. , Tatham R.L., Black W.C. (1998): Multivariate Data

Analysis, pp 70, Prentice Hall International: New Jersey

Kausler, D.H. and Settle, A.V. (1973): "Associate Relatedness vs. Synonymity in the False

Recognition Effect," Bulletin of the Psychonomic Society, 2, pp 129131.

Kotler, P (1996): Marketing Management-An Asian Perspective, pp 798, Prentice Hall:

Singapore.

Lowrey, T.M. (1998): The Effects of Syntactic Complexity on Advertising

Persuasiveness, Journal of consumer Psychology, 7(2), pp 187-206.

Lutz, Richard J., Mackenzie, S. B., and Belch, G. E. (1983): Attitude Toward the Ad as a

Mediator of Advertising Effectiveness: Determents and Consequences, in Advances in

Consumer Research, 10, pp 532-539.

Lutz, Richard J., Mackenzie, S. B., and Belch, G. E., (1983): Attitude Toward the Ad as a


15/18


16/1815

Shore,W. J., and Kempe, V. (1999): The Role Of Sentence Context In Accessing Partial

Knowledge Of Word Meanings, Journal of Psycholinguistic Research, 28, 145163.

Slobin, D.I. (1968), "Recall of Full an: Truncated Passive Sentences in Connected

Discourse," Journal of Verbal Learning and Verbal Behavior, 7, pp 876-881.

Smith, G. F., and Dorfman, D. D. (1975): The Effect of Stimulus Uncertainty on the

Relationship between Frequency of Exposure and Liking, Journal of Personality and

Social Psychology, 31, 150155.

Thorson, E., Reeves, B., and Schleuder, J. (1985): Message Complexity and Attention to

Television, Communication Research, 12, 427454.

Wansink Brian,. Ray M. L., Batra R,(1994): Increasing Cognitive Response Sensitivity,

Journal of Advertising , Volume 23, Number 2, June, pp 65-75

Wearing, A.J. (1973), "The Recall of Sentences of Varying Length," Australian Journal of

Psychology, 25, pp 155-161

Yi, Youjae(1990): Cognitive and Affective Priming Effects of the Context for Print

Advertisements, Journal of Advertising, 19, pp 40-48.

Yuille, J.C. and Paivio, A. (1969): "Abstractness and Recall of Connected Discourse,"

Journal of Experiment Psychology, 82, pp467-471.

Zaichkowsky, J. L (1987): The Personal Involvement Inventory: Reduction, Revision,

and Application to Advertising, Working Paper, Simon Fraser University.


17/1816

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 Healthyhair 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


18/18

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-careFig. 2

Documents

Arnab Laha Pseudo Scientific Jargon Advertising Persuasiveness