Deception in advertising revisited: antecedents and differences in perception across consumer groups

Relative fixed Internet connection speed experiences as antecedents of customer satisfaction and loyalty: An empirical analysis of consumers in Germany

“…With regard to the second reference point of speed-related connection quality assessments, the impression concerning access bandwidths conveyed to consumers in provider ads, the literature agrees that in many countries suppliers currently design their ads such that they promote unrealistic customer expectations in terms of data rates actually available under routine conditions (ACCC, 2017;Brinkmann, 2013;Bünder and Jansen, 2018b;Faulhaber, 2010;Hasan et al, 2011;Schamberg, 2015). Hence, broadband connection ads often share many of the characteristics suggested in the literature to identify variants of "deceptive advertising" (Barone and Miniard, 1999;Boush et al, 2009;Fathy et al, 2016;Riquelme et al, 2016;Xie et al, 2015). Advertisements of a customer's connection provider, which are experienced as overly positive, should also generate (psychological) losses among recipients because customers evaluate this supplier behavior as being unfair (Jha and Balaji, 2015).…”

“…Extant empirical research mostly finds that customer perception of "deception [in marketing], regardless of area, can cause a decrease in consumers' satisfaction and trust" (Gillespie et al, 2016). In addition, some empirical studies, which focus on correlations between the perceived veracity of ads of telecommunication network operators and customer bonds to such firms indicate that the detrimental effects of unrealistic ads on customer closeness with the supplier also hold in an telecommunication environment (Fathy et al, 2016;Khan et al, 2015;Shahzad and Kausar, 2016). However, prior investigations on customer deception in the telecommunications industry have not yet explored customer perceptions of the degree of realism of speed-related claims in ads of Internet connection providers.…”