Are vague claims good for your brand? Researchers say the answer’s ‘yes'

Around the world, businesses big and small have built their success on claims that are mere puffery – glowing, subjective and frequently impossible to verify. Are they harmless fluff? Research by the University of Missouri in the US suggests otherwise. 

The study, titled ‘Does puffery sell? Evidence from Airbnb’ has been published in the peer-reviewed Journal of Marketing Research. 

Testing the impact of puffery is challenging. With many businesses, slogans rarely change from year to year and have become inseparable from their brands. This makes it difficult to determine if the slogan is influencing modern consumers or riding on a brand reputation built over decades. 

So, the University of Missouri researchers turned to Airbnb. Unlike legacy brands, Airbnb listings are constantly revised. Hosts tweak descriptions while the underlying property stays the same, creating a rare opportunity to isolate the effect of language.  

Using data from more than 219,000 listings, Michael Thomas, an Assistant Professor of Marketing, analysed how changes in wording affected booking rates over time. 

Once the language was isolated, the pattern was hard to miss. Adding words such as ‘charming’, ‘cozy’ or ‘lovely’ boosted bookings by roughly 0.2%, about the same amount as adding an objective claim about an amenity or location detail. 

“At scale, we can observe small effects,” Thomas says. “When you see the same pattern across hundreds of thousands of listings, it tells you something meaningful is happening.” 

In other words, unsubstantiated puffery isn’t an irrelevant and subjective claim – it does increase consumption of the product or service.  

Artificial intelligence aids the research 

Artificial intelligence helped Thomas to break listing descriptions into individual claims and classify which ones counted as puffery under established legal standards – a process he validated against real court cases.  

That approach made it possible to study subjective language at a scale that would be impossible by hand and opens new doors for advertising research more broadly. 

“This kind of analysis just wasn’t feasible a few years ago,” Thomas says. “AI allows us to study how language works in the real world, not just in controlled lab settings.” 

What’s the point of this? 

The researchers believe findings carry practical implications for individual sellers and may extend to other brands as swell. 

Objective details still matter. Consumers want to know where a place is, what it includes and what it costs.  

But once this basic but essential information is readily available, Thomas suggests that puffery can further increase consumer demand. 

You can find out more about the study here.