Identifying misleading advertising

Abstract

A procedure for identifying misleading advertising is presented, based solely on measured consumer beliefs. An advertisement is misleading if an exposed group holds more false beliefs than a comparison group. When ten allegedly misleading advertisements were tested, two were identified as incrementally misleading, and four others were shown to be exploitively misleading. Determining whether an ad is misleading continues to prove difficult and controversial. Naturally, advertis-ers and consumer advocates rarely agree on whether a par-ticular ad is misleading. More disappointing, however, is the failure of researchers to agree on a broadly applicable definition of misleadingness or a procedure for identifying it (Gardner 1975; Jacoby and Small 1975; Preston 1976). The problem is further complicated by the conflict between the behavioral paradigm of researchers and the jurispruden-tial view of regulatory organizations