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Journal of Marketing Research

Vol. XLIV (February 2007), 114127114

2007, American Marketing Association

ISSN: 0022-2437 (print), 1547-7193 (electronic)

*Peter R. Darke is Finning Ltd. Associate Professor of Marketing,Sauder School of Business, University of British Columbia, and an assis-tant professor, Marketing Department, College of Business, Florida StateUniversity (e-mail: [email protected]). Robin J.B. Ritchie is AssistantProfessor of Marketing, Richard Ivey School of Business, University ofWestern Ontario (e-mail: [email protected]). This research was sup-ported by grants from the Social Sciences and Humanities Research Coun-cil of Canada. The authors thank the following people for their feedback onprevious drafts of this article: Amitava Chattopadhyay, Darren Dahl, DaleGriffin, Rick Pollay, and the INSEAD and HKUST marketing groups.They also thank Laura Smarandescu for help with data collection andentry.

PETER R. DARKE and ROBIN J.B. RITCHIE*

The authors show that deceptive advertising engenders distrust, whichnegatively affects peoples responses to subsequent advertising fromboth the same source and second-party sources. This negative bias

operates through a process of defensive stereotyping, in which the initialdeception induces negative beliefs about advertising and marketing ingeneral, thus undermining the credibility of further advertising.

The Defensive Consumer: AdvertisingDeception, Defensive Processing, andDistrust

Consider the following examples: An advertisement for aphoto-finishing service displays a well-known brand of filmpaper, but when the photos are ordered, they are actuallyprinted on an inferior brand. A consumer reads an advertise-ment for a discount offer on computer printers but, on visit-ing the store, finds that the advertisement failed to mentionthat the printers were refurbished. A car dealership adver-tisement claims that a particular vehicle is well equipped,lots of options, but consumers who consult automotivemagazines discover that it is actually a base model withonly standard features. These are all examples of consumercomplaints made to the industry regulatory agency Adver-tising Standards (www.adstandards.com). Our researchinvestigates the impact of such forms of advertising decep-tion on consumer responses to subsequent advertisingclaims.

We propose that advertising deception leads consumersto become defensive and broadly distrustful of furtheradvertising claims. A series of studies shows that advertis-ing deception produces a negative bias in consumers atti-tudes toward subsequent advertisements. In the studies, biasnot only applied to the original source of deception but alsogeneralized from one advertiser to the next, across differentgeographical regions, across different kinds of products,

and across different types of claims. These generalizedeffects occurred because advertising deception activatednegative stereotypes about advertising and marketing ingeneral. The main implication of our work is that deceptiveadvertising can seriously undermine the general effective-ness of advertising communication by making consumersdefensive and therefore should be of concern to all advertis-ers. Even advertisers that had superior products proved tobe vulnerable to these effects. We offer strategies for reduc-ing the occurrence of misleading advertising and for dealingwith defensive consumers.

BACKGROUND

Prior research on misleading advertising has focusedlargely on identifying the specific types of claims that leadconsumers to make erroneous judgments (e.g., Burke, Mil-berg, and Moe 1997; Johar 1995; Shimp and Preston 1981;Snyder 1989). For example, incomplete comparisons (seeShimp 1978) suggest that a product is of high quality with-out providing a clear referent of comparison (e.g., Acmebrand is faster acting), thus rendering the claim essentiallymeaningless (faster acting than what?). Another commonform of deception involves the use of implied superiorityclaims (Snyder 1989), which suggest that the target brand is

better than competitors without stating this claim directly(e.g., no toothpaste fights cavities better). However, suchclaims do not preclude the possibility that all brands per-form equally well or even that no brands are particularlyeffective.

Although consumers often fall prey to the subtle infer-ences implied in such advertising claims, complaintsreceived each year by agencies such as Advertising Stan-dards and the Better Business Bureau indicate that manypeople who are initially misled by advertising eventuallyrecognize that they were duped. Indeed, reports of deceptiveadvertising appear to be increasing. Between 1997 and

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Advertising Deception, Defensive Processing, and Distrust 115

2001, Advertising Standards recorded a twofold increase inthe number of complaints it received. Such complaints, asthe previous examples illustrate, tend to focus on the failureof products to live up to the expectations that the advertise-ments created and are consistent with a form of misleadingadvertising known as claimfact discrepancies (Gardner1975). Consumers do not need to know exactly how theywere misled by an advertising claim; they merely need toperceive a discrepancy between the impression that theadvertisement generated and the performance of the productto know they have been fooled. The current investigationadds to the existing literature on deceptive advertising byfocusing on the impact of advertising deception, in the formof claimfact discrepancies, on responses to further adver-tising claims, as well as its role in generating negativestereotypes and distrust toward advertising and marketingas a whole.

Pollay (1986) was one of the first researchers to proposethat exposure to deceptive advertising can prompt con-sumers to adopt a broad negative posture toward furtherattempts at persuasion. He suggested that all forms of com-munication rely on a basic norm of honesty and that break-ing this norm can prompt people to make the generalizationthat no one should be trusted. According to Pollay, falseadvertising claims turn us into a community of cynics,[who] doubt advertisers, the media, and authority in all itsforms (p. 29). This view is consistent with traditional defi-nitions of distrust, including that of Rotter (1967), who pro-poses that a person tends to become distrustful when othersfail to live up to the words, statements, or promises theymake (see also Kramer 1999). Rotter further distinguishesbetween specific trust/distrust, which is based on priorinteractions with the same source, and more generalizedtrust/distrust, which emerges from a persons cumulativeexperience with similar sources. According to this view, it isassumed that consumers are fairly rational in their use of

information pertaining to the trustworthiness of an advertis-ing source and should rely on generalized perceptions oftrust/distrust only in the absence of more specific evidence.

Others view distrust as a powerful force that is capable ofproducing persistent biases in judgment (Kramer 1998). Forexample, distrust may lead consumers to make a sinisterattribution error, characterized by an overattribution ofhostile intentions to advertisers (Main, Dahl, and Darke2007). Distrust has also been shown to engender percep-tions of conspiracy such that consumers overestimate thecoordination of different advertisers influence attempts.Kramer (1998) argues that confirmation bias often rein-forces such forms of distrust by undermining informationthat is objectively diagnostic of the truth, thus leading to

judgments that verify initial distrust. In general, this viewcharacterizes distrustful people as irrational, in the sensethat they overgeneralize distrust to situations in which it isnot warranted.

Several indicators suggest that consumers are becomingincreasingly distrustful of business practices in general andof advertising in particular. For example, the proportion ofpeople who claim to distrust major corporations has morethan doubled in the past 30 years (Nye, Zelikow, and King1997). More recently, an Ipsos-Reid (2003) opinion pollrevealed that a mere 17% of respondents trusted the adver-tising industry. Only the much-maligned tobacco industrywas less trusted. Other research shows that a majority of

consumers hold negative beliefs toward advertising and thatdistrust is a central feature of these beliefs. For example,Pollay and Mittal (1993) identify 39% of households ascritical cynics (i.e., they view advertising as largely falseand corruptive), 7% as deceptiveness wary (i.e., theyacknowledge some benefits to advertising without actuallytrusting it), and 16% as degeneracy wary (i.e., they regardadvertising as deceptive and harmful to important socialvalues). Only 38% of respondents in the survey were char-acterized as content consumers (i.e., they viewed adver-tising as both truthful and informative). Overall, it appearsthat consumers often distrust advertising and that deceptiveadvertising may play an important role in generating suchdistrust.

THEORETICAL DEVELOPMENT

Dual Process Framework

We used a dual process framework (Chaiken and Trope1999) to test the prediction that deceptive advertising pro-duces a negative bias in evaluative responses toward subse-quent advertising messages by engendering distrust. Weadopted the terminology of the heuristicsystematic model

(Chaiken, Giner-Sorolla, and Chen 1996; Chen andChaiken 1999), which proposes that persuasion can occurthrough both heuristic and systematic processing. Theheuristic process involves the use of heuristic cues to makesimple inferences (e.g., people should agree with a trust-worthy source). Systematic processing involves more effort-ful elaboration of persuasive arguments and typically pro-duces evaluations that reflect the strength of thesearguments (Petty and Cacioppo 1986). Importantly, thismodel suggests that the same variable (e.g., trust/distrust)can play multiple roles in persuasion. Traditionally, dualprocess models assume that information processing isdriven by accuracy goalsthat is, a desire to be impartial,open-minded, and logical. However, more recent versions

recognize that evaluations can also serve defense goals(Chaiken, Giner-Sorolla, and Chen 1996), in which peopleuse evaluations to protect their self-image or material inter-ests (Darke and Chaiken 2005). Defense goals are mostlikely to be evoked when persuasive messages are person-ally threatening and tend to bias information processing in adirection that reduces such threats.

Evidence has shown that defense goals can lead to eitherbiased heuristic or biased systematic processing, dependingon the level of threat involved. Defense-biased systematicprocessing typically arises when the threat from a persua-sive message is high, leading to active counterarguing andelaborative thoughts and evaluations that are biased in aself-protective direction (Liberman and Chaiken 1992). In

contrast, when the threat is indirect or less immediate,defense goals tend to be served by defense-biased heuristicprocessing, in which people use simple cues selectively toneutralize threatening information (Giner-Sorolla andChaiken 1997). For example, people might avoid the impli-cations of a threatening message by evoking a negativestereotype about the message source to undermine its credi-bility (Sinclair and Kunda 1999). This is known as defen-sive stereotyping, and it tends to occur automatically inresponse to personal threats (Spencer et al. 1998).

In dual-processing terms, we suggest that advertisingdeception makes consumers believe that they have been

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116 JOURNAL OF MARKETING RESEARCH, FEBRUARY 2007

fooled, which motivates them to protect themselves againstsubsequent deception. Consequently, we expected that con-sumers who had recently been deceived by an advertiserwould react to further advertisements from the same sourceby engaging in defensive systematic processing. A newadvertisement from the same deceptive source presents aclear and immediate threat of fooling people again andshould lead consumers to engage in active counterarguingagainst the second advertisement, thus producing a negativebias in their evaluations and elaborative thoughts.

More important, we were also interested in examiningthe notion that deception by one advertiser could lead con-sumers to become more distrustful of advertisements fromother sources (Pollay 1986). In this case, we expected nega-tive attitudes to be the result of defensive heuristic process-ing because receiving a message from a second, unrelatedadvertising source should constitute a less direct threat toconsumers. More specifically, we expected the process tobe one of defensive stereotyping, in which the initial decep-tion would evoke negative stereotypes about advertising ormarketing in general. When activated, these negative stereo-types should produce a negative bias in subsequent attitudesby undermining trust in the second advertiser.

Different kinds of elements can constitute the content ofnegative stereotypes toward advertising or marketing,including beliefs, feelings, attitudes, and exemplars (Fiskeand Taylor 1984). We were most interested in the aspects ofsuch stereotypes that were related to distrust toward second-party advertisers. We used two different measures to assessstereotype activation in our studies: the advertising skepti-cism (SKEP) scale and an implicit measure of stereotypeactivation. Consistent with the notion of defensive stereo-typing, ad skepticism is a general tendency toward dis-belief of advertising claims (Obermiller and Spangenberg1998, p. 160). As such, it is part of a broader set of market-place beliefs that includes schemer schemas (Friestad and

Wright 1994) and negative feelings and attitudes towardadvertising and marketing in general. Skepticism towardadvertising is also related to skepticism in other marketingcontexts (e.g., sales), but it is distinct from skepticism innonmarketing contexts. Although reliable trait differencesexist in ad skepticism, evidence shows that recent market-place experiences can also temporarily influence suchbeliefs (Obermiller and Spangenberg 2000). Our secondmeasure of stereotype activation is an implicit measure (seeBargh, Lombardi, and Higgins 1988) that assesses theextent to which advertising deception primes negativebeliefs about marketers truthfulness (Experiment 3). Inboth cases, ad deception should activate negative marketingstereotypes, thus undermining trust in other advertisers and

insulating consumers against advertisers further persuasionattempts.

Dual Process Research on Trust/Distrust

Existing research pertaining to the dual process frame-work suggests that trust/distrust can play multiple roles inpersuasion. Early studies found that trust acts as a simpleagreement cue in heuristic processing, such that there isgreater agreement when a person has information that aspecific source is trustworthy (e.g., Petty, Cacioppo, andSchumann 1983). More recent work has shown that distrust

increases the level of objective systematic processing(Priester and Petty 1995). Learning that a persuasive sourcehas an ulterior motive leads people to differentiate morebetween strong and weak arguments, such that attitudesbecome more positive for strong arguments and more nega-tive for weak arguments. This pattern is indicative of objec-tive systematic processing (Petty and Cacioppo 1986). Ulte-rior motives are also known to increase the accuracy ofattributional thoughts pertaining to the credibility of themessage source (Campbell and Kirmani 2000; Fein, Hilton,and Miller 1990). Notably, however, all these studiesmanipulated specific trust (as defined by Rotter 1967), inthat information pertaining directly to the message sourceformed the basis for determining the trustworthiness of thatsame source. Overall, then, existing evidence indicates thatsource-specific trust acts as a simple heuristic cue and thatsource-specific distrust increases the level of objective sys-tematic processing.

Our investigation builds on this research by showing thatdistrust arising from exposure to deceptive advertising hasdistinctly different effects from those identified in previousstudies. In particular, ad deception should evoke defensegoals, resulting in a negative bias in judgment toward addi-tional advertising messages. When consumers are con-fronted with subsequent advertising from the same decep-tive source, we expect that they will exhibit negativelybiased systematic processing rather than simply showing anincrease in objective systematic processing. Our researchalso goes beyond specific sources of trust/distrust to exam-ine the generalized effects of distrust on second-partysources. We expect that generalized distrust will bias theheuristic processing of second-party messages in accor-dance with the defensive-stereotyping mechanism by evok-ing negative stereotypes toward marketing. This process isdistinct from the simple heuristic processing related to spe-cific source cues observed in previous research.

To test these ideas, we conducted a series of experimentsthat manipulated the deceptiveness of an initial advertise-ment and examined whether this had negative effects onevaluations and information processing of a second adver-tisement that included weak and/or strong supportive argu-ments. Our theoretical framework inspired the followingpredictions:

H1: Ad deception leads to more negative evaluations of prod-ucts offered in subsequent advertisements, even if theadvertisement comes from a different advertiser (Pollay1986).

H2: Because of differences in the level of threat, active counter-arguing mediates the effects of ad deception when the sec-ond advertisement comes from the same advertiser but not

when the second advertisement comes from a differentadvertiser.

We also made two alternative predictions for the effects ofad deception on strong and weak arguments:

H3a: The accuracy view suggests that ad deception leads togreater differentiation between strong and weak argumentsfrom the same source.

H3b: The defensive-bias view suggests that both strong andweak arguments are vulnerable to the negative effects ofprior deception.

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Note that both the accuracy and the defensive-bias viewspredict that deception will lead to more negative attitudesfor weak arguments. Responses to strong arguments aremore diagnostic. If ad deception prompts an increase inobjective, accuracy-motivated processing, the result shouldbe more positive evaluations in response to strong argu-ments. Conversely, if ad deception produces defensive pro-cessing, responses should be more negative even in the faceof strong arguments. We make additional predictions in thecontext of each experiment.

EXPERIMENT 1

Experiment 1 examined whether exposure to deceptiveadvertising would cause consumers to become defensivetoward a second advertisement from either the sameadvertiser or a second-party advertiser. We included amanipulation of argument quality to determine whether anyobserved systematic processing was biased or objective innature. In addition, we included a trait measure of skepti-cism toward advertising so that we could compare theeffects of these preexisting beliefs with those of the decep-tion manipulation.

Method

Participants and design. One hundred seventy-twoundergraduate students were randomly assigned to condi-tions in the 2 (advertiser: same, different) 2 (deception:yes, no) 2 (argument strength: strong, weak) experimentaldesign. The main dependent measures were attitudes andcognitive responses.

Procedure. Participants completed the study in pairs(separated by dividers). The procedure included two phases.In Phase 1, which served to deliver the deception manipula-tion, all participants rated an initial advertisement for adishwasher. In Phase 2, participants were given an in-store

pamphlet for an answering machine called the XT-100. Weused this pamphlet to manipulate the strength of the sup-portive arguments for the target product. We also varied thesecond advertising source so that the advertisement camefrom either the same or a different source from that of theinitial dishwasher advertisement. After reading the pam-phlet, participants completed a questionnaire that containedthe dependent measures.

Phase 1. Participants read an initial advertisement for adishwasher called the Tilgo 2400, which contained severalmisleading claims designed to elicit favorable evaluations:Thinking about top quality dishwashers? Think Tilgo;Unbeatable performance for less; More features thanother leading national brands; New Ultraspray cleaning

power sets Tilgo above the rest; and No other dishwashergives you more value than Tilgo. Participants then ratedthe Tilgo 2400 relative to competitors and assessed its qual-ity, durability, and value. A pilot test indicated that, in gen-eral, ratings of this product were positive: For each meas-ure, more than 90% of respondents rated the Tilgo 2400 asaverage or better, and no one chose the lowest rating.

The experimenter then administered the deceptionmanipulation. This was done under the guise of an informaldebriefing for the first part of the study. Participants weregiven information that Consumer Reports magazine, an

impartial tester of consumer products, had evaluated theTilgo 2400 and determined that it was one of the worst dish-washers on the market. The experimenter also noted that theadvertisement seemed to suggest that the product was sub-stantially better than was actually the case. Participants inthe control condition (no deception) received no feedbackabout the Tilgo 2400. We designed this manipulation to beconsistent with the claimfact discrepancy definition ofmisleading advertising.

Phase 2. In Phase 2 of the experiment, participants readan additional pamphlet (approximately 470 words inlength), which provided information about the XT-100answering machine and contained a manipulation of argu-ment strength (based on Chaiken and Maheswaran 1994).Specifically, the pamphlet compared the XT-100 with twocompeting brands on six product attributes and asserted thatthe XT-100 was superior to both brands. We used a pretestto select important and unimportant attributes. In thestrong-argument version, the XT-100 was superior on fourimportant attributes (digital recording, call display,advanced message retrieval, and personal memo) and infe-rior on two unimportant attributes (number of colors andnumber of lines). In the weak-argument version, the XT-100was inferior on two important attributes (digital recordingand call display) and superior on four unimportant attributes(number of colors, number of lines, number of sizes, andspecialty bolts). Participants had as much time as theywanted to read the pamphlet, after which the pamphletswere collected. The ad claims we used for weak and strongmessages included only objective, search-attribute claims,which consumers are more likely to trust (Ford, Smith, andSwasy 1990).

This study also manipulated whether the initial dish-washer advertisement and the subsequent pamphlet for theXT-100 were attributed to the same advertiser or to a differ-ent advertiser. We accomplished this by varying the name of

the retailer in the initial dishwasher advertisement: attrib-uted to Bestway Appliances and Electronics in the same-advertiser condition and to Kingston Appliances in thedifferent-advertiser condition. It was important to distin-guish the source of the dishwasher advertisement from thesource of XT-100 pamphlet for participants in the different-advertiser condition, so these participants were led tobelieve that their evaluations of the XT-100 were part of aseparate study: Following the deception manipulation, eachpair of participants was told that only one person wasneeded for Phase 2 of the study and that the other wouldcomplete a different study in a different room with a differ-ent experimenter. A coin toss ostensibly determined partici-pants assignment to one of these two roles. In reality, how-

ever, all participants read the pamphlet for the XT-100 andcompleted the same final questionnaire. There was no evi-dence of suspicion about the connection between the twostudies in either the debriefing session or the open-endedsuspicion probes we included in the questionnaire.

Dependent measures. Respondents rated (on a scale from1 to 9) their overall attitude toward the XT-100 on the fol-lowing items: bad/good, useless/useful, negative/posi-tive, unfavorable/favorable, and not appealing/appeal-ing. We averaged these to form an index ( = .97). Next,participants were given three minutes to describe any

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thoughts they had while they were looking at the XT-100pamphlet. A trained coder who was blind to the experimen-tal condition classified these as positive, negative, or neu-tral. We calculated a valenced thought index by subtractingthe number of negative thoughts from the number of posi-tive thoughts and then dividing this by the total number ofthoughts. As a check for argument strength, participantsrated (1 = few, and 9 = many) the number of both posi-tive and negative features the XT-100 offered (r = .50). Togauge the deceptiveness of the initial advertisement, partici-pants rated the degree to which (1 = not at all, and 9 =extremely) they considered the dishwasher advertisementtruthful, honest, misleading, and deceptive ( = .80). Par-ticipants also rated whether they felt fooled and tricked bythe initial advertisement (r = .88). In addition, participantshad completed the SKEP scale approximately one monthbefore the study (Obermiller and Spangenberg 1998). Thisscale consists of nine items (e.g., We can depend on get-ting the truth in most advertising) rated on five-pointscales, which we averaged to produce trait SKEP scores( = .84). Higher scores indicate greater skepticism towardadvertising.

Results and Discussion

Analyses of covariance (ANCOVAs). We computed a 2(advertiser) 2 (deception) 2 (argument strength)ANCOVA with the SKEP scale as the covariate for alldependent measures. Initial analyses indicated that theSKEP scale did not interact with the manipulated variables.We adjusted all means for the covariate.

Two separate ANCOVAs revealed significant maineffects of the deception manipulation on perceived decep-tiveness of the initial advertisement (F(1, 163) = 138.02,p .15). Participants in the deception condition

considered the initial advertisement more deceptive (Ms =6.80 versus 4.50) and felt more fooled (Ms = 6.57 versus3.72) than participants in the control condition. The productfeatures measure revealed only a main effect of argumentstrength (F(1, 163) = 129.38, p < .001), indicating thatstrong arguments included better features than weak argu-ments (Ms = 3.75 versus 1.12).

The ANCOVA for attitudes toward the XT-100 revealedsignificant main effects of deception (F(1, 163) = 15.59,p .50).

Mediation. The deception advertiser interaction forvalenced thoughts indicated that the effects of deception onelaboration depended on whether the second advertisingsource was the same advertiser as before or different. Wecomputed separate path analyses for each advertiser condi-tion to examine directly whether cognitive responses medi-ated the effects of deception on attitudes. Consistent withH2, the deception thoughts attitude path was signifi-cant for the same advertiser (s = .22 and .53,ps < .05),indicating that deception biased attitudes through activecounterarguing. Conversely, when the second advertisementwas attributed to a different advertiser, the direct deception attitude path was significant ( = .19,p < .05) but themediated deception thoughts attitude path was not

(s = .05 and .62,p > .60 and p < .001). The absence ofcognitive mediation in the latter case indicates that priordeception by a different advertiser biases attitudes throughheuristic processing alone (also consistent with H2).

We computed a final path analysis to examine the cogni-tive mediation underlying the effects of the SKEP scale onattitudes. This showed evidence of both biased systematicprocessing (trait skepticism thoughts attitude path;s = .14 and .57,ps < .06) and biased heuristic processing(trait skepticism attitude path; = .13,p < .05). Theseresults are comparable to the defensive processing that thedeception manipulation induced.

Summary. The results from this study largely support theprediction that a deceptive advertisement has a negative

impact on both the same advertiser and the second-partyadvertiser (H1). Path analyses suggest that active counter-arguing is involved in the direct effects of deception (sameadvertiser) but not in the generalized effects of deception(different advertiser), consistent with the notion that con-sumers engage in defensive heuristic processing when thethreat is less direct (H2). Finally, there is evidence that priordeception induced biased information processing (H3b) inthe sense that deception had negative effects on attitudeseven when the second advertisement contained strong argu-ments. Note that these findings cannot be explained by any

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increase in objective processing that ad deception induced,because this should have produced greater differentiationbetween strong and weak arguments (i.e., there was no sup-port for H3a). However, there was evidence that someamount of objective processing occurred; in general, con-sumers appreciated the differences between strong andweak arguments on measures of valenced thoughts and atti-tudes. Strong arguments proved vulnerable to the negativeeffects of deception, despite consumers awareness of thesuperior benefits, which suggests that the defensive bias hada relatively powerful effect on information processing andattitudes. Finally, trait differences in ad skepticism pro-duced effects that were similar to those of prior deception.This provided some initial evidence that deceptive claimsmay activate negative stereotypes about advertisers. Theexperiments that follow provide additional evidence of thisphenomenon.

Although the majority of findings support H1, there wereno negative effects of ad deception for weak argumentsfrom a different advertiser, which is inconsistent with thisnotion. It seems possible that the lack of a deception effecthere was because the threat of being deceived wasextremely low and thus did not evoke defensive processing.However, we failed to replicate this finding in a subsequentstudy (i.e., deception had a significant, negative effect onattitudes when the second advertisement contained weakarguments from a different advertiser), so we recommendcaution in interpreting this finding.

EXPERIMENT 2

Experiment 1 showed that deception involving attitudestoward one set of product attribute claims can negativelyaffect attitudes formed in response to a subsequent set ofproduct attribute claims. Experiment 2 examined whetheran advertisers ad deception would generalize to other kindsof advertising claims and evaluations (H1). In this case, the

target advertisement focused on a price promotion, and dealvalue served as the evaluative measure. We also varied thepricing information in the advertisement to provide a plau-sible reference price, an exaggerated reference price, or noreference price at all (Urbany, Bearden, and Weilbaker1988). Plausibility of the reference price was analogous tothe manipulation of argument strength in Experiment 1, sowe expected that prior deception would undermine percep-tions of value, regardless of whether participants consideredthe reference price plausible (consistent with H3b). Wealways attributed the second advertisement to a differentadvertiser so that we could further verify that the negativeeffects of ad deception generalized to second-party sources(H1).

We also wanted to specify further the heuristic mecha-nism by which ad deception generalizes from one source toanother. Although Experiment 1 showed that these effectswere not cognitively mediated (H2), this does not provide adirect test of the defensive-stereotyping mechanism we pre-dicted to be involved. According to this mechanism, addeception activates negative stereotypes about advertisingor marketing in general, which then undermine trust insecond-party advertisers, thus making the advertisementless persuasive. We tested this specific mechanism inExperiment 2 by including a state measure of ad skepticism

(as opposed to the trait measure we used in Experiment 1)to assess stereotype activation, as well as a measure of trusttoward the second advertiser. In addition, we posited that addeception might induce a negative emotional state in par-ticipants (see Johar 1996), which could further contribute tonegative judgments of the second-party advertisement. Weincluded a measure of participants affective state to exam-ine this possibility. This led to the following additionalpredictions:

H4: The defensive-stereotyping view suggests that negativestereotypes and trust in the second advertiser mediate theeffects of prior deception on evaluations.

H5: The negative-affect view suggests that negative emotionsmediate the effects of prior deception on evaluations.

Method

Participants and design. One hundred sixteen partici-pants were recruited at a university located on the WestCoast. Participants were randomly assigned to a 3 (refer-ence price: none, plausible, exaggerated) 2 (deception:yes, no) between-subjects experimental design. The secondadvertisement always came from a different advertiser. Per-ceptions of deal value served as the dependent measure.State skepticism, trust in the second advertiser, and affectwere potential mediators.

Procedure. The deception manipulation was identical tothat in Experiment 1. Immediately following this manipula-tion, participants rated (on a scale ranging from 1 to 9) theiraffective state in terms of the extent to which they currentlyfelt good, bad, happy, sad, angry, calm, irritated, and satis-fied. We reverse-scored negative items and averaged theseratings to obtain an affect index ( = .87). Afterward, par-ticipants were taken to a different room to complete a sec-ond study with a different experimenter. In this phase, par-ticipants examined an advertisement for a 25-inch RCA

color television set. This included a picture of the televisionand pricing information that varied according to thereference-price manipulation. In the no-reference-price con-dition, we provided only the selling price of $349. For par-ticipants in the plausible-reference-price condition, the$349 selling price was framed by an initial price claim of$449; for those in the implausible-reference-price condi-tion, it was framed by an initial price claim of $999. Pricelevels were based on pretest data that found mean estimatesfor low, average, and high prices to be $291, $415, and$595. We did not reveal the name of the advertiser for thesecond advertisement; participants knew only that it wasfrom a major electronics dealer in a well-known city on theEast Coast.

After examining the television advertisement, partici-pants completed a questionnaire that included a thought-listing procedure (e.g., It seems like a good deal, Theregular price is hard to believe) and a series of ratings(from 3 to +3). The main dependent measure was dealvalue (adapted from Urbany, Bearden, and Weilbaker1988). Participants indicated their level of agreement witheach of the following statements: (1) The advertised televi-sion is an excellent buy for the money; (2) At the saleprice, the television is not a very good value for themoney; and (3) The advertised offer represents an

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extremely fair price. We averaged these responses ( =.74). Participants also rated whether the second advertiserwas trustworthy/untrustworthy, reliable/unreliable, andcredible/not credible ( = .94) and completed the stateSKEP scale ( = .80). To check the reference-price manipu-lation, participants indicated their perceptions of the adver-tisers regular price for the television set. Finally, partici-pants completed checks of the deception manipulation (seethe description in Experiment 1).


Analyses of variance (ANOVAs). We computed a 3(reference-price) 2 (deception) between-subjects ANOVAfor each dependent measure. The manipulation checksagain showed that participants in the deception conditionperceived the initial advertisement as deceptive and feltmore fooled than did participants in the control condition(Fs(1, 110) = 57.90 and 22.32, ps < .001). Furthermore,estimates of the advertisers normal selling price showed asignificant effect of the reference-price manipulation(F(2, 109) = 143.98,p < .001; Ms = $361.45, $433.18, and$857.18).

The ANOVA for deal value ratings revealed only a sig-nificant main effect for deception (F(1, 110) = 5.44, p .40).Consistent with H1, participants who were previouslydeceived by the product attribute advertisement consideredthe price offer less valuable than those who were notdeceived (Ms = .08 versus .58).

The ANOVA for valenced thoughts showed no significanteffects of deception (F(1, 110) = 1.78, p > .15). Thisimplied that cognitive responses did not mediate the effectof advertising deception on deal value, which is consistentwith our previous finding that the effects of deception on

second-party advertisements occurred through a heuristicprocess (H2).

Consistent with H4, the ANOVAs for measures of trust inthe second advertiser and state skepticism showed only amain effect of the deception manipulation (Fs(1, 110) =7.47 and 4.49, ps < .05). No other effects were significant(Fs < 1). Participants who were previously deceived wereless inclined to trust the second advertiser (Ms = .27 ver-sus .02) and had a higher level of state skepticism (Ms =3.49 versus 3.28) than participants in the control condition.

In contrast, the deception manipulation did not have asignificant influence on participants overall affective state(F(1, 107) = 1.48,p > .20) or on positive and negative affectratings when examined separately. These findings suggestthat affective reactions cannot account for the effects ofdeception on deal value; thus, H5 was disconfirmed.

Mediation. We computed a path analysis (see Figure 1) toexamine the defensive-stereotyping hypothesis (H4) further.This revealed that the predicted deception state skepti-cism trust in the second advertiser deal value pathwas significant. The deception trust in the second adver-tiser deal value path was also significant. The directdeception attitude path was no longer significant afterwe accounted for the other paths.

Summary. Overall, the findings of this study are consis-tent with the notion that deceptive advertisements can pro-duce a negative bias that generalizes to other types of adver-tisements (consistent with H1). In this case, the effects ofdeception generalize from an advertisement that made falseproduct claims to perceptions of deal value for an advertise-ment that made price claims. In addition, these negativeeffects applied to advertisements with both plausible andexaggerated references prices, conceptually replicating theresults pertaining to argument strength in Experiment 1

Figure 1EXPERIMENT 2: PATH ANALYSIS FOR EFFECTS OF DECEPTION ON DEAL VALUE

*p < .05.**p < .01.***p < .001.

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(consistent with H3b). Again, this bias occurred throughheuristic processing because elaboration did not mediate it(H2). There was also direct evidence that these heuristiceffects were due to defensive stereotyping (H4), in whichinitial deception evoked general skepticism toward advertis-ing as a whole, thus undermining the trustworthiness of thesecond-party advertiser. Conversely, there was no evidencethat advertising deception induced negative affect; thus, H5is not supported.

EXPERIMENT 3

Experiment 3 featured several changes aimed at furtherexamining the extent to which the negative effects of addeception generalize to other advertisements (H1). In par-ticular, we incorporated a separation of approximately 24hours between ad deception and exposure to the secondadvertisement. This time delay is consistent with prior stud-ies that examine the duration of advertising effects (e.g.,Bushman and Bonoacci 2002; Morrin and Ratneshwar2003) and with findings that suggest that stereotypes canremain active in memory for approximately one day afterpriming (e.g., Dasgupta and Greenwald 2001; Srull and

Wyer 1980). A 24-hour period is also practically significantin that consumers encounter some 500 commercial mes-sages daily (Arens 2006).

Experiment 3 also used a different main dependent meas-ure. Whereas Experiments 1 and 2 focused on global meas-ures of evaluation (i.e., product attitudes and deal value), itis also important to know whether the negative effects of addeception will operate at the level of individual productbeliefs. Consequently, this study examined specific beliefsrelated to the product claims made in the targetadvertisement.

Again, Experiment 3 included a manipulation of whetherthe second advertisement came from the same advertiser ora different advertiser (as in Experiment 1). This enabled us

to retest H2 and, more important, to examine the effect ofthe time delay on mean differences between the advertiserconditions. Although Experiment 1 showed that there wereno mean differences in attitudes related to products from thesame versus a different advertiser, we expected that suchdifferences would emerge over time because of the memorytriggers available in each case (Balota and Paul 1996).Specifically, exposure to a different advertiser should primenegative stereotypes related to advertising or marketing ingeneral, whereas exposure to the same advertiser shouldtrigger not only these negative stereotypes but also morespecific memories related to the previous deception by thesame source. This led to the following prediction:

H6: Advertising deception leads to more negative beliefs aboutthe product when the second advertisement comes from thesame advertiser than when it comes from a different adver-tiser after a 24-hour delay.

Finally, Experiment 3 included an implicit measure ofstereotype activation to retest H4 rather than the explicit rat-ings of ad skepticism we used in the previous studies. Thisimplicit measure was essentially a free association foradvertising- and marketing-related words (based on Bargh,Lombardi, and Higgins 1988). We also included severalnonmarketing items to examine whether the negativestereotype activation that ad deception produced was spe-

cific to marketing contexts or whether it generalized toother sources of information as well. We predicted thefollowing:

H7: Ad deception induces negative stereotypes toward advertis-ing and marketing but not toward nonmarketing sources ofinformation.

Method

Ninety-five undergraduate students were randomlyassigned to conditions in a 2 (advertiser: same, different) 2 (deception: yes, no) between-subjects experimentaldesign. The dependent measure was product beliefs. Cogni-tive responses and an implicit measure of stereotype activa-tion served as mediator variables. The procedure was simi-lar to that in Experiment 1, with a few changes. First, weextended the interval between the deception manipulationand Phase 2 of the study to 24 hours. Second, the targetadvertisement described a brand-name portable stereo (theAiwa PSR 4080) sold by a (fictional) retailer located on theopposite side of the country. The advertisement included apicture of the product and the price ($127) and describedsix attributes: a read/writeable CD player, the ability to playMP3 files, enhanced bass, an advanced remote control, flex-ible programming, and longer battery life. Pretesting con-firmed that these were considered strong features.

After the deception manipulation, participants completedthe implicit stereotype activation measure. Each personviewed a series of marketing-related primes (televisionadvertisements, discount offers, used car salesmen, andbrands) and then listed the first three words that came tomind after reading each prime. A coder who was blind tothe experimental condition coded these responses for wordsrelated to distrust or deception (e.g., sleazy, fake, toogood to be true). We summed these to create an implicitmarketing stereotype activation measure. To assess whether

deceptive advertising activated negative beliefs in an evenbroader context, we also included two additional nonmar-keting primes: Consumer Reports magazine and eBay. Wealso coded and summed responses to these primes to form anonmarketing stereotype activation measure. Approxi-mately one day after the initial advertisement, participantsread the second target advertisement and indicated theextent to which they believed the product possessed the sixproduct attributes (1 = disagree completely, and 9 =agree completely). We averaged scores to form an overallproduct belief index ( = .91). Finally, participants com-pleted the thought-listings and manipulation checks wedescribed in Experiment 1 and the ratings of trust in the sec-ond advertiser we described in Experiment 2.


ANOVAs. We analyzed all dependent variables using a 2(advertiser) 2 (deception) between-subjects ANOVA. Sep-arate ANOVAs revealed main effects of deception for boththe ratings of deceptiveness of the initial advertisement(F(1, 91) = 240.64,p < .001) and feelings of being fooled(F(1, 91) = 47.43, p < .001). This verified that comparedwith the control, participants in the deception conditionviewed the initial advertisement as more deceptive (Ms =8.03 versus 4.54) and felt more fooled (Ms = 6.82 versus3.92).

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The ANOVA for the belief measure revealed significanteffects of deception and advertiser (Fs(1, 91) = 38.81 and13.56, ps < .001) and an advertiser deception interaction(F(1, 91) = 9.31,p < .01). Consistent with H6, prior decep-tion had a more negative impact on beliefs when partici-pants attributed the second advertisement to the samedeceptive advertiser (Ms = 3.94 versus 6.28) than when theyattributed it to a different advertiser (Ms = 5.64 versus6.44). However, the effects of deception were significant inboth cases (ps < .001 and .05, respectively), in support ofH1.

The ANOVA for valenced thoughts revealed a deceptionmain effect (F(1, 91) = 4.88,p < .05; Ms = .44 versus .22for deception versus control). In addition, the ANOVA fortrust in the second advertiser showed significant effects ofdeception, advertiser, and the deception advertiser inter-action (Fs(1, 90) = 42.58, 18.16, and 11.70,ps < .001). Addeception undermined trust in the same advertiser (Ms =2.80 versus 5.67) more than in a different advertiser (Ms =5.01 versus 5.91), though the effect of deception was sig-nificant in both cases (ps < .001 and .05, respectively).

Consistent with expectations, there was a main effect ofdeception on the implicit stereotype activation measure(F(1, 91) = 8.55, p < .01), which showed that previouslydeceived participants were more likely to respond withwords related to distrust in response to marketing primes(Ms = 1.76 versus .93). However, there were no significanteffects for the ANOVA computed for responses to the non-marketing primes (F < 1; Ms = .16 versus .09). These find-ings are consistent with H7 and suggest that ad deceptionevokes negative stereotypes toward advertising and market-ing but not toward nonmarketing sources of information.

Mediation. We computed separate path analyses for eachadvertiser condition to retest H2. For the same advertiser,the mediated deception valenced thoughts belief pathwas significant (s = .37 and .33,ps < .01), whereas only

the direct deception belief path was reliable for the dif-ferent advertiser condition ( = .30, p < .05). In furthersupport of H2, these findings suggest that deception led tomore negative beliefs by inducing active counterarguing forthe same advertiser but through more heuristic processing(i.e., no cognitive mediation) when the advertiser wasdifferent.

We computed additional path analyses to test the morespecific idea that deceptive advertising would prompt lessfavorable product perceptions for the second advertisementthrough a process of defensive stereotyping, as H4 pre-dicted. A significant deception implicit stereotype trust in the second advertiser belief path in each adver-tiser condition supported this prediction (see Figure 2).

Summary. Overall, the results of Experiment 3 provideevidence that deceptive advertising produces persistentnegative consequences for subsequent advertising (H1). AsH6 predicted, the delayed effects of ad deception weresomewhat stronger for the same advertiser than for a differ-ent advertiser. Again, cognitive responses indicated that addeception acted through active counterarguing when theadvertising source was the same but through heuristic pro-cessing when the advertisement was from a differentsource, in support of H2. Furthermore, ad deception had anegative impact on product perceptions, even though thesecond advertisement always contained strong arguments,in support of the biased-processing view (H3b) over the

objective-processing view (H3a). Using an implicit measureof negative stereotype activation, we found further evidencethat suggested that a defensive-stereotyping mechanism wasat work, in support of H4. Ad deception induced implicitstereotypes about marketers, which undermined trust in thesecond advertising source and brought about more negativeproduct perceptions. Furthermore, although ad deceptionevoked negative beliefs about the untrustworthiness ofadvertising and marketing, it did not activate such beliefstoward nonmarketing sources, in support of H7; this sug-gests some specificity of the induced negative stereotypes.

EXPERIMENT 4

A final experiment examined the specific proposition thatthe generalized effects of prior deception on second-partyadvertisements are defensive in nature. Evidence has shownthat defensive processing is more likely to be observedwhen ego involvement is high (Chaiken, Giner-Sorolla, andChen 1996). Specifically, a negative defensive bias in atti-tudes is more likely when consumers are direct targets of addeception (high ego involvement) than when they merelylearn that others have been deceived or when misleading

advertising is reported in the news media (both instances oflow ego involvement). Therefore, we predicted thefollowing:

H8: Deceptive advertising has a negative effect on the evalua-tions of second-party advertisements primarily when egoinvolvement is high rather than low.

Method

Seventy-five students participated in one of two largeexperimental sessions as part of a large, multistudy survey.We included four conditions: control, deception article,indirect deception, and direct deception. Participants in thefirst session were randomly assigned to either the control or

the deception-article condition, and participants in the sec-ond session were randomly assigned to either the direct- orthe indirect-deception condition. The main dependent meas-ure was attitude toward a different advertisers product.

Participants assigned to the deception-article conditionread a news story, which was attributed to a national maga-zine, that reported a recent increase in advertising deceptionand provided (actual) examples of false advertisementclaims from well-known companies that the Better BusinessBureau identified as deceptive. In the control condition, par-ticipants read a news story about the marketing of beer,which made no reference to deceptive advertising. Partici-pants then rated (on a scale ranging from 1 to 7) the extentto which the article made them concerned, suspicious, and

distrustful. We averaged these responses ( = .83), andanalyses showed that the deception article increased ratingsof distrust compared with controls (Ms = 4.78 versus 2.80;t(35) = 5.10,p < .001).

Participants assigned to the direct-deception conditionread the dishwasher advertisement and made the same ini-tial ratings we described in Experiment 1. Those in theindirect-deception condition examined a different initialadvertisement for a bicycle and responded to similar ques-tions. Afterward, under the guise of a debriefing for the firstpart of the study, the experimenter told all participants inthe session (i.e., those in both the direct- and the indirect-deception conditions) that some of them had evaluated a

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B: Different Advertiser

*p < .05.**p < .01.

***p < .001.

Figure 2EXPERIMENT 3: PATH ANALYSIS FOR EFFECTS OF DECEPTION ON PRODUCT BELIEFS 24 HOURS LATER

A: Same Advertiser

dishwasher advertisement and others had evaluated a differ-ent advertisement for a bicycle. The experimenter went onto say that the dishwasher advertisement was actually awell-known example of deceptive advertising and thatthough the advertisement made the dishwasher sound like areasonably good product, the Better Business Bureau deter-mined that it was one of the worst on the market. Thismeant that participants who had initially read the dish-washer advertisement experienced direct deception,whereas those who received the bicycle advertisement

learned about the deceptive dishwasher advertisement indi-rectly. Finally, all participants were given a final packagethat contained the target advertisement, which was identicalto the portable-stereo advertisement we used in Experiment3. Participants indicated their attitudes toward the productusing the ratings we described in Experiment 1.


A one-way ANOVA on product attitudes revealed a mar-ginally significant condition effect (F(3, 71) = 2.18, p

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.10). A comparison of means showed that direct deceptionled to more negative attitudes than in the other conditions(Ms = 4.99 versus 5.86, 6.25, and 5.56 for control, news-article, and indirect conditions, respectively; F(1, 71) =4.62, p < .05). Overall, as H8 predicted, evaluations weremore negative when ego involvement was high (i.e., in thedirect-deception condition), suggesting that the generalizedeffects of ad deception are truly self-defensive in nature.

GENERAL DISCUSSIONEvidence from the four experiments provided consistent

support for the hypotheses, particularly the notion thatdeceptive advertising evokes a general negative posturetoward further advertising (H1). This was true not only foradvertisements from the same deceptive source but also forsecond-party advertisements that had no connection to theoriginal transgressor. Importantly, these effects were rela-tively long lasting in that they influenced consumers asmuch as a day after the deceptive incident. They were alsobroad in their impact, generalizing across different productcategories (from a deceptive dishwasher advertisement toadvertisements for an answering machine, a television, anda portable stereo), types of ad claims (from product-basedclaims to price-based claims), and geographical regions(from a local advertisement to an advertisement from theother side of the country). We also observed ad deceptioneffects for several important dependent variables: specificbeliefs, product attitudes, and perceptions of deal value.Finally, these effects were powerful in the sense that expo-sure to deceptive advertising undermined evaluations evenin the face of strong product benefits, for plausible dis-counts, and toward advertisements for name-brandproducts.

Negative reactions to ad deception occurred through twodistinct processes. As the defensive-bias hypothesis pre-dicts, consumers engaged in biased systematic processing

(i.e., active counterarguing) when they viewed additionaladvertisements from the same source that previouslydeceived them. This processing was biased in the sense thatdeception produced more negative thoughts and attitudes inthe face of strong supportive arguments (H3b). Conversely,the accuracy view predicts more positive responses to suchstrong arguments (H3a). In addition, cognitive elaborationdid not mediate the effects of ad deception on second-partyadvertisements, presumably because the threat of beingfooled again was lower (H2). Further investigation con-firmed that the heuristic mechanism responsible for the lat-ter effect was defensive stereotyping (H4), in which adver-tising deception activated negative stereotypes aboutadvertising and marketing in general, which in turn under-

mined trust in the second advertiser and ultimately reducedthe persuasive impact of the second advertisement. How-ever, there was no evidence that affective reactions medi-ated the impact of advertising deception (H5).

We suggest that the difference between the biasingeffects of distrust shown here and the increase in objectiveprocessing found in previous studies is partially due to thepersonal nature of the distrust that the advertising deceptiongenerated. Advertising deception not only communicatesthat the source is dishonest but does so by making con-sumers feel fooled as well. This evokes self-protectivegoals, which bias information processing to minimize thepossibility of being fooled again. We obtained direct evi-

dence for the defensive nature of the reactions to ad decep-tion in Experiment 4, in which the negative bias in attitudeswas induced only when the initial advertisement personallydeceived consumers. This negative bias did not occur whenparticipants merely observed others being deceived or whenthey read a news article warning about advertising decep-tion. In general, prior studies showing that distrust is pri-marily associated with objective processing have manipu-lated this variable in a less personal way, by tellingparticipants that the source may not be trustworthy or bysuggesting that the source has an ulterior motive. Suchmanipulations seem merely to raise uncertainty as towhether the source can be trusted, which might explain whyaccuracy goals rather than defense goals are evoked. How-ever, both distrust arising from advertising deception anddistrust associated with other cues, such as ulterior motives,have ecological validity, and both are likely to influence theextent to which advertising is persuasive, albeit in differentways.

Our findings also suggest some limits to the negativeeffects of advertising deception, negative stereotyping, andgeneralized distrust. First, as we mentioned, consumersmust be personally fooled by the advertisement. Advertisingdeception is likely to lead to defensive processing onlywhen ego involvement is high (H8). Second, the implicitstereotype measure in Experiment 3 showed that the nega-tive beliefs that ad deception generated are limited to mar-keting contexts (H7). Distrustful thoughts were not primedfor nonmarketing sources, such as Consumer Reports oreBay. Third, Experiment 1 suggests that defensive reactionsare not evoked by weak arguments that come from a differ-ent advertiser, because the threat of persuasion is particu-larly low in this case. However, this explanation is specula-tive. Finally, the amount of time that follows the deceptioncan also limit its impact on persuasion. Experiment 3 sug-gests that this is especially true for the impact of defensive

stereotyping on second-party advertisers.Several other factors could also limit the current findings.For example, all the advertisements came from retailersrather than manufacturers, and these retailers were alwaysunfamiliar to participants. In addition, although there wassome variance in the products described in the advertise-ments, these were all durable goods and electronics. It isconceivable that the effects of generalized distrust wouldfail to hold across a broader range of advertising sources orproducts. However, additional studies have been conductedthat demonstrate that distrust can also generalize to adver-tisements from manufacturers (Ritchie 2004), to advertise-ments from well-known and otherwise highly trusted adver-tisers (Darke 2004), and across different product categories

(e.g., from a deceptive luggage advertisement to a courier-service advertisement; Ritchie 2004).Other factors might actually lead ad deception to have

even stronger effects than we observed. For example, the addeception in the current studies did not involve any materialcosts. Because these costs are known to increase defensemotivation (Darke and Chaiken 2005), ad deception shouldhave even stronger effects when tangible costs are involved.In addition, participants were exposed to only a single inci-dence of deceptive advertising. However, repeated exposuremight be expected to increase the negative effects of addeception even further, perhaps by increasing the chronicsalience of negative marketing stereotypes (Bargh, Lom-

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bardi, and Higgins 1988) or by increasing trait skepticism(Obermiller and Spangenberg 2000).

There is a potential concern that experimental demandcould have played a role in causing ad deception to general-ize to second-party advertisements. However, there are sev-eral arguments against this interpretation of the findings.We disguised the connection between the two advertise-ments by implying that they were part of two differentexperiments. This seemed plausible, given that it is rela-tively common for people in our participant pool to com-plete multiple studies in the same experimental session. Inaddition, the suspicion probes showed no indication thatparticipants perceived any connection between the twostudies. Moreover, the time delay we included in Experi-ment 3 further reduced the possibility that participantswould make a connection between the two advertisements.Finally, any experimental demand would seem to applyequally to the direct- and indirect-deception conditions inExperiment 4, but we observed the negative effects of addeception only when participants experienced ad deceptiondirectly, as the defense hypothesis predicted.

IMPLICATIONS

As Obermiller and Spangenberg (1998) note, consumerskepticism tends to undermine the benefits of the free mar-ket by essentially making advertising less efficient. The cur-rent studies show that deceptive advertising is an importantfactor in activating such beliefs about advertising. Addeception tends to bias consumers against the implicationsof advertising from second-party sources by evoking nega-tive stereotypes, thus reducing the persuasive impact offuture advertisements. The generalized effects of distrust onadvertising we observed in our studies suggest that decep-tive advertisements have the potential to be damaging toadvertising in general and, by extension, to firms that relyheavily on advertising to sell their products. Accordingly,

firms should be concerned about their peers deceptiveadvertising practices, including not only immediate com-petitors but also advertisers in other product categories andother geographic markets. Our findings lay bare anyassumption that firms can immunize themselves against theeffects of consumer distrust by eliminating deceptive claimsfrom their own advertisements or by simply selling goodproducts with clear, superior benefits. The negative impactof defensive stereotyping that deceptive advertising inducesgeneralizes even to these contexts. Consequently, ourresearch makes a strong case for the importance of avoidingdeceptive advertising claims, not merely out of concern forfairness to consumers but also as a means of preserving theeffectiveness of marketing communication as a whole.

The distrust that ad deception generated also led to somelevel of inaccuracy in consumer judgment in that distrustfulconsumers did not fully appreciate the objective benefitsthat the strong arguments suggested (compared with con-trols). Overall, although some effects of distrust are reason-able in that they help people recognize real threats and exer-cise greater diligence (see also Campbell and Kirmani2000; Priester and Petty 1995), the generalized distrust thatdeceptive advertising induces seems less adaptive in that itproduces a rigid bias in judgment that leads consumers toignore relevant information about product quality. Ourresults indicate that consumers defensive response todeceptive advertising may actually be counterproductive

because it has the potential to compromise consumer wel-fare. Although a defensive posture obviously reduces therisk of being fooled, indiscriminate distrust also limits con-sumers abilities to benefit from genuinely attractive offers.Therefore, our research sounds a note of caution to con-sumers against adopting an overly defensive posture towardmarketers. Decision making is more likely to be improvedby suspicion that causes consumers to think more carefullyabout advertisements in an objective fashion. Consumersmust somehow balance accuracy concerns pertaining to theadvertising they see with the more defensive concern ofbeing tricked or fooled.

In light of the substantial costs of deceptive advertisingwe identified in our research, obvious questions arise as tohow best to limit its occurrence. Regulation is one solutionthat both the government and groups such as AdvertisingStandards and the Better Business Bureau have attempted.Our findings emphasize the importance of such organiza-tions in maintaining the general credibility of advertisingand, thus, its effectiveness. However, external regulationcan present its own set of problems (Andrews and Maronick1995; Gardner 1975; Richards and Preston 1992). Forexample, it is difficult for regulators to provide marketerswith clear rules that apply to all conceivable situations. Abetter solution may be for advertisers themselves to avoidmaking misleading claims that could generate consumerskepticism by using an expectations screening procedure(Gardner 1975). This involves carefully pretesting theexpectations that a new advertisement creates and compar-ing these expectations with actual performance norms toensure that performance meets or exceeds thoseexpectations.

Our research also suggests that marketers should strive todevelop concrete strategies for dealing with distrustful con-sumers in the marketplace, and we offer some guidance fordoing so. Despite the defensive bias that participants who

were exposed to deceptive advertisements exhibited, theycontinued to differentiate between products with strongbenefits and those with weak benefits. This implies thatsuperior products, whose benefits are clearly explained toconsumers, still confer a relative advantage, even in the faceof defensive consumers. Marketers should also seek alterna-tive means of communicating with consumers who areskeptical of advertising or hold general negative stereotypesabout marketing, such as viral marketing aimed at increas-ing positive word of mouth among consumers themselves.

Perhaps the most critical lesson to be drawn from the evi-dence we present here is the need to further persuade adver-tisers of the importance of resisting pressures they mightfeel to exaggerate their claims. Recent work (Drumwright

and Murphy 2004) suggests that though some advertisersare highly aware of ethical concerns, many are eitherunaware or intentionally dismissive of even relatively obvi-ous ethical issues. Managers seem particularly unconvincedof the broader, cumulative effects that advertising can haveon consumers (e.g., Pollay 1986). Moreover, even thosewho are aware of such concerns are often unwilling to raiseethical issues with their clients and coworkers because theybelieve that it is not the advertisers responsibility to raisesuch concerns or because they believe that their clientspressure them to make sensational or exaggerated claims.Our findings make it clear that marketers have a powerfulself-interest in upholding truth in advertising. Advertising

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deception not only undermines the credibility of advertisingas a whole by making consumers broadly defensive towardfuture advertising but also produces effects that are espe-cially long lasting and damaging for the advertisers that aredirectly responsible for making the deceptive claims in thefirst place.

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