An Experimental Investigation of the Documentation of Advertising Claims

The FTC's Advertising Substantiation Program requires manufacturers, when demanded, to submit data substantiating advertised product performance claims. One question an advertising manager might ask is whether the disclosure of such substantiating data about a brand would impact on consumers' attitudes toward that brand. This research was designed to test whether the disclosure of the existence of test results documenting an advertised claim would be valued by subjects in an experimental setting. Subjects were shown advertisements for fictitious brands of products and their attitudes toward those brands were then measured. Three independent variables were manipulated: type of advertised claim (experience, search and credence), source of the disclosure (FTC or the manufacturer), and level of involvement (high or low). Results of the study indicate that subjects' attitudes were not significantly more favorable toward advertisements disclosed as having documentation available from the FTC but in the case of disclosure of documentation available from the manufacturer there was evidence that subjects' attitudes became more favorable for some types of claims.