Main effects and selected interactions

Within this study three independent variables played an important role and were manipulated, namely scarcity, fluency and involvement. For each of these variables a set of expectations was created and formalised in hypotheses about their main effects. In general, this study confirms the overall picture present about both fluency and the level of involvement in the scientific literature. For scarcity this picture was less congruent with literature.

5.1.1. Fluency effects found and expected within this study

Fluency is known for its ability to impact the creation and change of attitudes through the positive affective response it creates (Winkielman et al., 2003), which in turn can lead to a wide range of effects (Alter & Oppenheimer, 2009). This study confirms that image in part within its findings. Several expected effects found in more situation-specific applications of fluency, for example the effect found on the price perception by van Rompay and Pruyn (2011) when product features, name and fonts used on the labels were congruent, were absent. Furthermore, this study did not provide evidence for an effect of fluency on the processing depth or time that was expected based upon an in-depth look at fluency related studies by

Master thesis Joris van Gend page 51 Alter and Oppenheimer (2009). Nor did it moderate the effects of scarcity. What this study overall did find is that fluency affects the creation and change of attitudes strongly. Using two congruent cues that signalled a product’s scarce status was enough to achieve this. Thus, this study confirms the role of fluency in attitude formation and adds to the literature by providing evidence in support of the notion that two cues with the same content in different formats can create a fluency effect. In line with ideas about both fluency and heuristic decision-making, the effect of the scarcity cues was attributed to the taste of the wine by more than 70% of the participants. Even though both a control condition and randomization ensured no part of the label, taste or name could lead or did lead to the selection of a wine. These results, and the positive results of the fluency manipulation checks, lead us to conclude that the manipulation of fluency using this new method was largely successful.

5.1.2. The level of involvement as a moderator and independent variable

The level of involvement with the outcome of a decision or evaluation is often associated with the processing style of consumers and as a moderator (Kitchen et al., 2014) of the effects of persuasion techniques. This has been the case since the 1980s (Petty et al., 1983). This study expected, in addition to its role in the overall model, the level of involvement to affect the processing style and depth directly. A more involved participant would process the information presented more deeply and take more time doing so, than one that was less involved with the outcome of his or her decision. A trend was indeed found within the results that supports this notion for the processing depth, but not for the processing time. This leaves open questions about the validity of processing depth and time as representative constructs of the processing style. This we will discuss more in-depth later. Surprisingly, this study found that a more involved participant had significantly higher price and value perceptions. They expected wines to cost significantly more and offered more money for them than participants that were less involved. The difference in the average price perception was more than 15%. Involvement did not moderate the effect of scarcity. We expected it to moderate it at the outset of the study. This can in part be attributed to the absence of some effects hypothesized for the manipulation of scarcity and will be discussed more in the next paragraph.

5.1.3. Scarcity, its manipulation and effects

Scarcity was manipulated both in a text and imagery. For the creation of the hypotheses and analysis the text-based scarcity was used as the leading scarcity cue for determining when a participant was in a scarce condition. Scarcity in form of imagery is only a relatively recent finding (van Herpen et al., 2014) and has thus only been studied to a limited degree. While all

Master thesis Joris van Gend page 52 manipulation checks indicated that the manipulation of scarcity was successful, some

expected main-effects were absent. A trend was found that indicates scarcity affected the buying intention of the participants. The scientific literature however produced a wealth of effects for scarcity, based upon which the dependent variables of this study were selected. The lack of their reproduction can in part be attributed to the conditions in which the two fluency cues contradicted each other. The analysis revealed that when the cues were incongruent, that the attitude towards the product was considerably more negative. Interference caused by the incongruent cells in our design could thus be the cause of absence for some of the scarcity main effects. Where incongruency may have interfered with the scarcity manipulation, the level of involvement generally strengthened it. In line with findings from the study by van Herpen et al. (2014), we found that a higher level of involvement generally led to higher scores on the dependent variable indexes and that this effect showed in interaction with scarcity as well, although only when combined with moderation from the processing depth.