Beauty is truth: The effects of inflated product claims and website interactivity on evaluations of retailers' websites

Retailers are in an arms race to attract customers to their websites and drive sales. This research examines how two techniques, inflated product claims and website interactivity, affect consumer evaluations of retailer websites. According to the Elaboration Likelihood Model (ELM), the authors argue that the use of strong, even inflated product claims leads to stronger website evaluations. The positive effects of inflated claims are bounded by website interactivity, which functions as a heuristic of the trustworthiness of a retailer's claims and website. Two studies demonstrate consistently that when website interactivity is high, the effects of inflated product claims are enhanced, whereas they are attenuated when website interactivity is low.