Robustness of Fluency Effects in Marketing Research - A Meta-Analysis
(A2023-114433)

AUTHORS

Lennart Kehl, Goethe University Frankfurt; Jan Landwehr, Goethe University Frankfurt

ABSTRACT

The following article presents a preliminary meta-analysis of experimental marketing research on processing fluency, defined as the subjective experience of ease or difficulty during stimulus processing, specifically of marketing instruments. Our preliminary results bear tremendous implications for categorizations and fluency manipulations thus far believed to be robust and univalently applicable. Across a total of 159 mean differences included in the main sample, the pooled effect size was g = .6069 with a 95%-confidence interval of 0.48 and 0.73. As estimated using a random-effects model, 84.3% of the variance in effect sizes was attributable to between-study heterogeneity rather than sampling error. A subgroup analysis further subdividing fluency across disciplines and manipulations reveals differing effect sizes by category and a large influence of fit-fluency effects with a pooled effect size of g = 1.283.