Robustness and Replicability of Fluency Effects in Marketing Research

近年来，许多营销现象都被用加工流畅性理论来解释。该理论描述了当营销活动简化了对该刺激的感知和/或概念处理时，消费者对营销刺激的偏好增加（例如，在汽车的情况下通过典型的设计，或者在广告消息的情况下通过易于阅读的字体）。尽管在领先的营销期刊上发表了大量关于流利性效应的科学出版物，但仍然缺少对这些效应的稳健性和可复制性的系统性文献综述和定量荟萃分析。因此，理论上的见解，可能的调节因素，确定的强度和/或方向的流畅性效果是非常有限的。然而，在专业界关于流利性是否被过度使用作为一个理论结构，并已被应用于不能有意义地解释它的现象的激烈辩论的背景下，对现有研究的系统分析是必不可少的。此外，目前在社会科学，特别是在心理学方面，有一个强有力的运动，以确保经验研究结果的普遍可靠性和可复制性，以加强对它们的信心。因此，本提案的目标是系统地审查现有的关于流利性的营销文献，并借助荟萃分析，确定增加或减少流利性效应发生可能性的因素。此外，该项目旨在系统地复制那些流畅性现象，其特征在于，根据现有文献的先前评估，（1）迄今为止尚未复制，（2）已被调查的样本量太小和/或（3）具有低效应量。如果重复研究无法复制最初报告的效果，将进行进一步的重复研究，以确定可能的因素，负面影响的影响大小的检查流畅现象。这将导致对流畅性效应的操作原理有更好的理论理解。此外，本项目旨在提供一个关于流畅性效应的现有市场文献目录，以便明确区分（1）无条件发生的，（2）仅在某些条件下发生的，及（3）发生的可能性较低，以致不应纳入市场推广的标准规范的行为─相关的流畅性效应，以支持稳健和可复制的流畅性效应的累积科学知识库的发展。

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.