Persuasion under the Radar: How Question Wording Affects Preferences

• Main Authors: KIM, Jongmin, Novemsky, Nathan, Wang, Jing, Dhar, Ravi
• Format: text
• Language: English
• Published: Institutional Knowledge at Singapore Management University 2014
• Subjects: Business
• Online Access: https://ink.library.smu.edu.sg/lkcsb_research_smu/236
• Institution: Singapore Management University

This research explores the effect of the language used in a rating task on consumer’s preferences. Consumers who rated a product during while consuming it on fancy attributes (e.g., How velvety is the wine?) liked the product more than those who rated the same product on non-fancy attributes (e.g., How smooth is the wine?). In answering a rating question, consumers seem to engage in confirmatory hypothesis testing, which biases overall evaluations. Consumers seem unaware of the persuasive impact of scale labels and therefore do not activate any resistance that would occur in response to an explicit persuasive appeal.