How Perceptual Disfluency Affects Consumer Choices

with Kurt Munz (Bocconi University)

• Under 3rd round review at Journal of Consumer Research 

• Best Presentation Award at 8th Mediterranean Symposium for Consumer Behavior Research Conference, ie Business School (2022)

Abstract. Marketing materials often create difficulties for consumers through elements like unconventional fonts or distracting background images, leading to perceptual disfluency—a sense of difficulty encoding information. During choices, consumers can mistake perceptual disfluency for choice difficulty, a feeling of indecision. Building on this idea, eleven preregistered experiments (N = 9,042) show that, when making choices, perceptual disfluency can lead consumers to rely on information that feels more intuitively appealing to them, such as a familiar brand, a preferred country of origin, or a recommendation, rather than on information they must carefully consider, like numerical product specifications. Differing from the effect of perceptual disfluency in other situations, during choices, this effect occurs because consumers process information less deeply, engaging in relatively more intuitive and less analytical processing. Perceived time pressure amplifies the effect on choices. In contrast, it does not occur when consumers do not mistake perceptual disfluency for choice difficulty, as when prompted to consider the actual reason for the disfluency or when not making a choice.

How Perceptual Disfluency Affects Consumer Choices 

• European Marketing Academy Conference, Madrid, Spain (2025)

• Australian & New Zealand Marketing Academy, University of Tasmania, Australia (2024)

• Melbourne School of Business and Economics, Melbourne University, Australia  (2024) 

• AMA-Sheth Foundation Doctoral Consortium, Manchester Business School, UK (2024) 

• Adelaide Business School, Adelaide University, Australia  (2023)

• 8th Mediterranean Symposium for Consumer Behavior Research Conference,  IE Business School, Spain (2022)

Gender-Ambiguous Voices and Social Disfluency

• Association of Consumer Research (ACR) Annual Conference, Seattle, USA (2023) (Presented by Kurt Munz)

• European Association of Consumer Research (EACR) Annual Conference, Amsterdam, Netherlands (2023) (Presented by Kurt Munz)

• Society for Judgment and Decision-Making (SJDM) Annual Conference, Poster presentation (2022, online)

Historical Price Fluctuation and Purchase Decision: The Role of Our Perception 

• Monash Business School, Australia (2023)