For the marketer, how and what consumers remember about their product is critical. Every year, many billions are spent trying to influence and inform customers online, on air, through print, radio, and virtually every medium available. What if your customer believes information that is untrue? It happens all the time in a noisy advertising world. But there is good news, and it relates to your customer’s brand commitment. In a new paper about false memories and brand commitment, marketing professor Priyali Rajagopal of SMU Cox and co-author Nicole Montgomery decode how brand commitment influences the consumer’s memories for products.

“We were curious about when false memories occur and when they do not,” Rajagopal says. “Is there a segment of consumers for which it is likely to happen more often? We therefore identified brand commitment or brand attachment as a boundary condition. Past researchers have found that if one is committed to a brand, they will forgive it more.” For example, the Apple devotee will not allow in negative information and will overlook virtually anything. A devotee might think: ‘The iPad is twice as heavy as the Samsung Galaxy, but, well, it doesn’t matter because it looks so cool…’ Are committed brand loyalists unflappable?

The Committed

In a series of three studies, the authors observed consumers who were highly committed to a brand versus others who were considered “low commitment.” The first study, using a vivid ad, revealed that when a fake line of pizzas from Pizza Hut called “The Naturals” was introduced, Pizza Hut loyalists believed they had tried this particular line. Those with high levels of commitment to the brand were in effect receptive to positive false memories.

Rajagopal explains the study further: “With brand commitment, the consumer is using the product regularly. One is drinking Coke only and not touching a Pepsi. You are tuned into the brand, thus false memories are hard to plant. So we thought maybe it’s the reverse: they are having so many contacts with a brand, that perhaps it is easier to slip something in.” With the first study, Pizza Hut’s Naturals, loyalists believed they had eaten it.  High commitment and low commitment consumers process information differently.

High commitment consumers engage in biased information processing to support their attitudes. Alternatively, low commitment consumers tend to be more objective when processing brand information. Past research on false memory has suggested that imagery can lead to false beliefs about consumption experiences. The impact of exposure to vivid brand information (i.e., high imagery ad, vivid product review) may differ across consumers, depending on their attachment to a brand, whether highly committed or on the lower end of the commitment spectrum.

A second study with running shoes as the target object and a third utilizing online reviews found that the highly committed were not convinced to hold negative views of their brand in light of reading others’ negative reviews. While advertising through vivid ads has been shown to influence the creation of false memories, this study is a first that considers the influence of word of mouth, particularly online reviews on false memories.

A third study used Subway as the study object target. The results showed that when faced with negative information, those committed to the brand actually generated their own positive memories about their experiences as a countermeasure toward the negative reviews. In other words, they defended their brand. Additionally, “committed” respondents reported fewer negative memories after reading negative reviews.

The studies also support the notion that negative memories can be generated for low commitment consumers more easily than high commitment consumers. Surprisingly, negative memories can be generated simply by exposure to negative reviews by other consumers. In other words, vicarious false memories may be generated.

Review Power

The authors wondered whether this phenomenon was always going to happen? The answer was “no,” according to Rajagopal.  In reading reviews online, the reader vicariously re-lives the experience with the reviewer. Rajagopal recalled that there were some pretty graphic reviews about Subway. “We found if people are attached to a brand, they are more likely to develop positive false memories but less likely to receive negatives ones,” Rajagopal states. “This is strategic use of memory. If you like Subway and hear negative information, you are more likely to remember or recall positive experiences.”

However low commitment consumers shift around, which flows over to attitude and commitment. This is actually one of very few papers that analyze the effect of online reviews: it actually increases commitment levels. Those not as committed become more so, which is terrific from a marketing standpoint. “The reviews matter, and it has downstream implications,” confirms Rajagopal. “Generally, consumers are more receptive when information is positive and less so when it’s negative.”

The paper “Remembering the Best of Times or the Worst of Times? The Moderating Role of Brand Commitment on False Product Experience Memories” by Priyali Rajagopal of SMU Cox and co-author Nicole Montgomery.

Written by Jennifer Warren.