The following script is taken from the article The Double-Edged Sword of Signaling Effectiveness by Zhu and colleagues (2012) (Journal of Marketing Research, February 2012). They use a variety of interesting techniques in their study designs, including measuring actual behaviors/usage. One of the studies was THE IMPACT OF EFFICACY ATTRIBUTE SALIENCE AND PICTORIAL CUE SALIENCE ON PRODUCT USAGE.

The main objective of the Study is to test our thesis that the impact of signaling effectiveness on product usage occurs primarily as a result of inferences made on the basis of effectiveness cues that are salient in the decision context. If this is the case, the effect should be attenuated when cue salience is low. Specifically, in addition to manipulating the presence of an effectiveness picture, we manipulate the salience of an efficacy description by changing font format (i.e., bold vs. plain text). We predict that when the efficacy description is salient, usage amount will be low regardless of additional pictorial cues signaling effectiveness. However, when the efficacy description is not salient, usage amount should be reduced when the additional effectiveness picture is present. Furthermore, Study demonstrates the impact of signaling effectiveness on product usage in an actual consumption scenario. We presented participants with the teeth-whitening rinse featured in the pilot studies and asked them to pour the amount of rinse they would use into a plastic cup provided by the experimenter.

Method

Participants and procedures. Two hundred forty-one undergraduate students from Brigham Young University participated in a product trial study for extra course credit. Study employed a 2 (efficacy attribute salience: bold vs. no bold) X 2 (pictorial cue salience: picture vs. no picture) between-subjects design. Participants sat in separate lab rooms during each session. After arriving at the lab, respondents were randomly assigned to one of the four experimental conditions. The stimuli used in Study were similar to those in the pilot studies except we added a product description presenting the product efficacy attribute: Clinically proven to be effective for fast teeth whitening. For participants in the no-bold conditions, all descriptions were in plain font. They were either provided with product descriptions or a pictorial cue highlighting effectiveness (i.e., the picture of a smiling face) in addition to the product descriptions. For participants in the bold condition, the font for the efficacy description Clinically proven to be effective for fast teeth whitening was in bold text while the font for other descriptions remained in a plain font. Again, the picture of a smiling face was either present or absent. All participants were asked to raise their hand after they finished examining the product information. The experimenter then gave each participant a bottle of the featured new teeth-whitening rinse and a plastic cup. Participants were asked to pour the amount of whitening rinse they would use on a single occasion into the plastic cup, and they were told to feel free to spend time trying and evaluating the product. At the end of the session, participants were quizzed about the objective of the study and then were debriefed, thanked, and dismissed. None of the participants correctly guessed the true purpose of the experiment.

Measures.

The amount of whitening rinse that participants poured into the plastic cup served as our main dependent variable. Rinse bottles were measured before and right after each lab session using a scale calibrated to .01 gram. We determined the amount of rinse that each participant poured into the cup by taking the difference in the weight of each rinse bottle between the ex ante and ex post measurements.

Results and Discussion

A 2 (efficacy attribute salience: bold vs. no bold) X 2 (pictorial cue salience: picture vs. no picture) revealed a significant interaction between efficacy attribute salience and pictorial cue . Consistent with the findings of the pilot studies, in the conditions in which the efficacy attribute was not salient in the consumption context (i.e., when the description Clinically proven to be effective for fast teeth whitening was in a plain font), the addition of an effectiveness pictorial cue (i.e., adding the picture of a smiling face) significantly decreased the amount of rinse poured. However, in the bold conditions in which the efficacy attribute was salient (i.e., when the description Clinically proven to be effective for fast teeth whitening was in bold text), participants poured about the same amount of rinse regardless of whether the effectiveness picture was present. To summarize, the Study replicates the proposed effect of signaling effectiveness on product usage in an actual product trial scenario. Our results indicate that the presence of a salient cue stressing product effectiveness reduced the actual usage amount of the whitening rinse by more than 18%, regardless of it being a description expressing actual product efficacy (in this case, the attribute Clinically proven to be effective for fast teeth whitening in bold text) or a nondiagnostic pictorial cue highlighting the sought-after end state (in this case, adding the picture of a smiling face). Importantly, the results of the Study identify cue salience as an important boundary condition, which provides direct empirical evidence for our theoretical explanation that the impact of effectiveness cues on consumption mainly arises from inference making. In support of this explanation, we find that when the attribute depicting actual product efficacy (Clinically proven to be effective for fast teeth whitening) is salient, usage amount is low regardless of whether there is an additional cue signaling effectiveness (adding the picture of a smiling face). Conversely, when this efficacy attribute is not salient, usage amount is reduced only when the additional effectiveness cue is present.

Question: Do you think the above findings would hold in the real world or only in a controlled experimental setting such as those used in the above article? Why?