January 08, 2025

Marketing literacy: How do shoppers react when they detect deception?

We are surrounded by marketing every day.

Facebook ads and promotional texts are the most obvious. But there are other, less overt, marketing tactics companies use to motivate consumers, from odd pricing — such as items marked $14.97 at big box stores — to tensile price claims — sales that present a range of price discounts applied to a discounted category.

Hualu Zheng, assistant professor of management & marketing in Susquehanna University’s Sigmund Weis School of Business, studied tensile price claims to see how customers reacted when they discovered they weren’t getting the full discount advertised.

“We wanted to find out how aware customers are of marketing tactics,” Zheng said, “with the goal of improving marketing literacy among consumers and identifying policy implications that could aid in safeguarding consumer rights.”

Zheng conducted her study through a paid search campaign that presented consumers with identical ads that varied the percentage off — up to 10% off or up to 90% off. All search ads were linked to the same landing page on a global apparel website where most items were between 10% and 15% off, and only one item was 90% off.

Zheng tracked customers over 55 days to determine if the high percentage off led to increased clicks and if the detection of deception — discovering that most items were barely discounted — resulted in a purchase or continued web browsing.

She found that the higher the tensile price claim, or advertised discount, the less likely consumers were to purchase, having identified the deception within the marketing claim.

Zheng said her findings could have policy implications in the areas of consumer rights, false advertising and marketing ethics.

“Our findings suggest that once consumers detect deception from a business, they are inclined to move on from that business,” Zheng said. “This tells us that integrity in marketing isn’t just about selling a product, it’s about building trust. It’s the cornerstone upon which lasting relationships between consumer and brand are built.”

Onafowora named among top Black economists in nation, leader in PA

Olu Onafowora, department head and professor of economics at Susquehanna University, is named among the top 20% of the nation’s leading Black economists based on the number of times his research has been cited by others in the field.

In a journal article in the Review of Black Political Economy, Onafowora, who also serves as the Warehime Chair in the Sigmund Weis School of Business, is ranked at No. 40 out of 200 counterparts from Brown, Columbia, Harvard, Princeton and Yale universities.

“We are incredibly proud to see Professor Onafowora recognized as one of the national leaders in his field. This honor not only highlights his groundbreaking contributions to economic research but also reinforces the caliber of our faculty at the Sigmund Weis School of Business,” said Matt Rousu, dean of the business school. “His leadership and expertise inspire both his colleagues and students, and his recognition is a testament to the impact that dedicated scholarship can have, both in shaping young minds and influencing the future of the discipline.”

The article, the first of its kind in more than 20 years, revisits the study of the research productivity and impact of Black economists. The ranking gives explicit recognition and acknowledgment to top-quality Black economists within the economics profession, which remains largely white and male, the article authors write. The study also provides Black undergraduate and graduate students role models who are specifically perceived as highly productive within the mainstream economics profession, they add.

Onafowora joined the faculty at Susquehanna University in 1989 and has served as economics department chair since 2010. Under his leadership, the program is ranked No. 33 among U.S. liberal arts colleges.

His scholarly and teaching expertise is in principles of macroeconomics and microeconomics, intermediate micro-
economics, labor economics, economic development, public finance, third world economics and managerial economics.

Onafowora has published more than 40 scholarly articles and has presented more than 50 conference papers at international, national and regional conferences in disciplinary and interdisciplinary combinations of these areas.