Efficacy Expectations and Adherence: Evidence of Consumer Biases and Heuristics in Pharmaceutical Marketing - Innovation and Marketing in the Pharmaceutical Industry - page 323

11.2.1.8 Perceptual Fluency and Familiarity Effects

Perceptions of fl uency—the ease or diffi culty with which information is perceived—
determine perceptions of familiarity, such that fl uently vs. disfl uently processed
stimuli/activities appear more familiar and elicit more positive affective responses
(for a review, see Schwarz et al. 2009 ). As such, people infer familiarity from ease
of processing—the latter depending on presentation variables such as exposure
duration, high fi gure-ground contrast, and repetition. Moreover, familiar stimuli,
such as information, are often accompanied by perceptions of popularity, liking, and
truth. For instance, mere repetition of a product claim has shown to increase ratings
of its validity (Hawkins and Hoch 1992 ; Hawkins et al. 2001 ; Skurnik et al. 2005 ).
Thus, if consumers are continuously exposed to an advertisement stating how
effi cacious a medication is, they may eventually believe that it is indeed so.
Interestingly, Song and Schwarz ( 2009 ) found that diffi cult to pronounce stimuli
(e.g., food additives) were judged to be more risky and harmful than easy to pro-
nounce stimuli. Additionally, participants rated less vs. more easily pronounced names
as more novel. Although the names of medicines are often imagined to contain rare
consonants (e.g., “Z”), reliance on familiarity as a heuristic suggests that pharmaceuti-
cal medications could benefi t from names that are more easily pronounced—to reduce
perceptions of risk and perhaps increase intentions to buy. In general, marketers of
pharmaceutical products can take advantage of processing fl uency effects by present-
ing medication benefi t information in easy-to-process formats (e.g., larger fonts), and
risk information in hard-to-process formats (e.g., smaller fonts) to infl uence effi cacy
expectations at the awareness stage.

11.2.2 Systematic Processing Biases: Perceived Product

Performance and Quality

11.2.2.1 Comparative Claims

Consumers also exhibit bias in evaluating message claims, for instance inferring
that a product is superior to all competitors when incomplete comparatives are used
(e.g., “Mennen E goes on warmer and drier”; Shimp 1978 ). In one study of the
effects of alternative product claims, such as true statements (e.g., “Temporarily
reduces headache pain”), expansions of true claims (e.g., “Complete relief from
pain”), and qualifi ed claims (e.g., “Complete relief from pain (pain associated with
musculoskeletal infl ammation)”), Burke et al. ( 1988 ) found that the latter two
claims, vs. the former or no information condition, resulted in signifi cantly higher
levels of false beliefs about a medicine's effectiveness, lack of side effects, low
price, and fast action. Interestingly, with regard to effi cacy perceptions, although
“true information” vs. no information increased perceptions of a product's perfor-
mance on the latter three attributes, “true information” about a brand's effectiveness
resulted in beliefs that the brand was less effective than in the no information