We often use the phrase “puffery” to describe some of the claims made by cosmetic companies. To help understand what we mean by that term, we’ve found an excellent reference from the Journal of Consumer Research. (Via ScienceDaily)
Puffery claims explained
Authors Alison Jing Xu and Robert S. Wyer, Jr. from the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign define claims as puffery if they “purport to be of great importance but are actually inconsequential and often meaningless.”
By this definition, claims based on technical details that are only valid to experts in the field but that are not necessarily perceived by the consumer could be considered puffery. We see this all the time with ads that make statements like “makes your hair 5x stronger.” Yes, there is a way to measure the percentage increase in hair strength but how in the world would a consumer know how “5x” really means for them?
Interestingly, the researchers did an experiment which showed that when consumers think they have less relative knowledge than an average person, puffery claims can increase their positive assessment of the product, regardless of the source of the ad. But when the consumers thought they had more relative knowledge than the average person, puffery claims had a positive ONLY when they came from a more credible source, like a professional magazine. When consumers thought they were better informed and they read puffery claims from a “regular” source of information, like a popular magazine, then the puffery actually DECREASED their belief in the product.
It will be interesting to see how cosmetic companies integrate these findings into their advertising strategies.
What do YOU think? Do you pay attention to so called “puffery” claims? Leave a comment and share your thoughts with the rest of the Beauty Brains community.
Reference:
Alison Jing Xu and Robert S. Wyer, Jr. Puffery in Advertisements: The Effects of Media Context, Communication Norms and Consumer Knowledge
Journal of Consumer Research, August 2010
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I agree with the article. i do a lot of informal research on beauty products and natural products and have for 35+ years, and I therefore consider that I do know more than the average person. I rarely ever even listen to product self-promotion (i.e., what Brand X says about Brand X – its own – products) and even more rarely ever believe what they say. They have self-interest in mind; i.e., they will say anything without regard to the truth. I will go to some sort of impartial place, i.e., the Beauty Brains, to see what others’ actual experience is with the product. And the more outrageous the claim, the less I respect the company doing the self-promotion and the less likely I am to buy their product. I will also tell others that I think the product is basically junk and what I have found will work better.
For instance, after reading that others had experience with hair loss when using Pantene products, I quit using them. I started using Pantene back in the day when it was carried by high-end department stores, Nordstrom, for instance, when it was expensive, and before it was acquired by whatever mass-marketing company now sells it. Way back in the day, it was an excellent product with provable good results. Once it was acquired by the mass marketing/producing company it is owned by now, the formula was changed, but I still used it about a quarter of the time. After reading online of quite a few others’ experience with hair loss when using Pantene, even though I have not personallly experienced that, I quit using it about a year ago and dumped all that I had.
I really wish they’d just be honest and tell me what I really want to know: is it for wrinkles, brown spots, reddening? I don’t know what “brightening” even is supposed to be, for example. Does that mean that my flush-prone skin is going to be even worse? My skin seems plenty bright thank you very much. If one of “signs of aging” is wrinkles, I don’t have any. I don’t want a greasy product—I have oily skin. Just tell me that it’s going to form a film that will keep my makeup form settling, or if it has sunscreen or retinoids or what. AND don’t put fragrance or chemical sunscreens in it if you want me to buy it….and tell me so on your website, too.
A sociology post! This makes me happy. I’m skeptical of any products (particularly since I work in marketing), and will do as much research as I deem necessary to see if the product is actually worth the hype. Or, I just stick to home remedies. Why pay so much for a night cream when olive oil works just as well and it’s way cheaper?
I would like to hear more about Pantene and the claims of hair loss. I use it and I do notice a fair amount of hair shedding, but since I have a lot of hair, I can’t tell if that’s natural or just my imagination.
This is probably why I assume most Lancome/L’Oreal skincare products are crap. I’m sure they have some perfectly good products and maybe even a few that are better than their competitors – I mean L’Oreal is the biggest cosmetics company in the world, right? With everything at their disposal and that huge array of products they’ve got to have some winners, right? But exposure to years of their fluffy (and sometimes misleading) advertising has trained my brain to automatically sort anything with that logo into the “crap” file. Tant pis, L’Oreal…
Yay, alma mater!
Oh, I am so tired of these ambiguous claims too! Like, “Hair looks stronger”. I want hair that IS stronger, not looks it! And another well known face cream (which I will never ever use due to a permanent skin condition a family friend now has) claims it beat out all these more expensive creams. It doesn’t even say how it beat them out. It could’ve been based on price, in which case, of course a drugstore product would beat it!
I was once one of the ‘makers of puffery’ for big beauty companies. It felt so normal and it was so accepted by all my co-workers. It always amazed me how unethical our sales and advertising tricks were.
The 5x stronger hair is a great example of that ‘puffery’. First, ‘stronger hair’ can be defined in many ways by the R&D team, so they could have chosen one parameter that gave them that claim. Moreover, I wonder if the marketing team asked them to find a test that would give them that claim?