Robustness and Replicability of Fluency Effects in Marketing Research

• Applicant: Professor Dr. Jan Landwehr
• Subject Area: Accounting and Finance
• Term: since 2021
• Project identifier: Deutsche Forschungsgemeinschaft (DFG) - Project number 464612885

In recent years, many marketing phenomena have been explained based on the theory of Processing Fluency. The theory describes that consumers’ preferences for a marketing stimulus increase when marketing activities simplify the perceptual and/or conceptual processing of that stimulus (e.g., in the case of a car by a typical design or in the case of an advertising message by an easy-to-read font). Despite the numerous scientific publications on fluency effects in the leading marketing journals, a systematic literature review and a quantitative meta-analysis of the robustness and replicability of these effects are still missing. Accordingly, theoretical insights into possible moderating factors that determine the strength and/or direction of fluency effects are very limited. However, against the background of a lively debate in professional circles about whether fluency is overused as a theoretical construct and has been applied to phenomena that cannot be meaningfully explained by it, a systematic analysis of existing research is essential. Furthermore, there is currently a strong movement in the social sciences, and especially in psychology, to ensure the general robustness and replicability of empirical findings in order to strengthen confidence in them. Accordingly, the goal of the present proposal is to systematically review the existing marketing literature on fluency and, with the help of a meta-analysis, to identify factors that increase or decrease the likelihood of fluency effects to occur. Moreover, the project aims to systematically replicate those fluency phenomena that can be characterized, based on the preceding evaluation of the existing literature, by (1) not having been replicated so far, (2) having been investigated with a too small sample size and/or (3) having a low effect size. If the replication studies are unable to replicate the effect originally reported, further replication studies will be conducted to identify possible factors that negatively influence the effect size of the examined fluency phenomenon. This should lead to a better theoretical understanding of the operating principles of fluency effects. Furthermore, the present project is intended to provide a catalog of the existing marketing literature on fluency effects, so that a clear distinction can be made between those effects that (1) occur unconditionally, (2) occur only under certain conditions, and (3) those that have a low probability of occurrence such that they should not be included into the standard canon of marketing-related fluency effects to support the development of a cumulative scientific knowledge base of robust and replicable fluency effects.

• DFG Programme: Research Grants
• Co-Investigator: Dr. Laura Kathrin Maria Graf, from 4/2022 until 9/2022