The Pitfalls of Over-Communication in Marketing

As a real estate agent, you might face a situation where a property you present has an imperfection.

You may feel compelled to share this imperfection with a prospective buyer, thinking it will help them appreciate the property more if they can imagine it without the flaw.

But is this approach practical?

Intuitively, when this situation arises in any sales or marketing situation, it’s more common than not that the marketer or sales-person is overly-optimistic in their convictions –and even more often to their detriment.

The Research: The Effects of Sharing Upward Counterfactual Information (UCI)

When we communicate with others, primarily when we aim to impress or make a sale, we often unknowingly create a discrepancy between our intentions and the actual impression we leave on our audience.

A study published in the April 2023 edition of the Journal of Marketing Research examined the effects of presenting upward counterfactual information (UCI) to prospective buyers.

It did this by analyzing eight studies conducted across various domains, including real estate and product marketing, that has uncovered a fascinating phenomenon known as the presenter-experiencer discrepancy in the communication of upward counterfactual information (UCI).

In this context, a “presenter” is anyone marketing or selling a product or service, whereas an “experiencer” is whomever the “presenter” is marketing or selling to.

Upward counterfactual information indicates a better or superior alternative that could have been but is not currently available.

UCI informs consumers that their current consumption experience of an evaluation target could be better and that a better version exists.

Typically such information comes in the form of defects a product or service possesses, which a hypothetical alternative does not.

The study found that presenters (e.g., real estate agents) often share UCI with experiencers (e.g., prospective buyers), believing it will enhance their impressions of the presented target (e.g., a house).

For example, if a house a real estate agent is looking to sell to a prospective buyer has a minor flaw, they’re prone to point this flaw out to the buyer because they believe it will influence them toward closing a deal.

Surprisingly (to researchers), however, UCI worsens the experiencers’ impressions.

While the marketer or salesperson knows the defect is minor, the experiencer lacks the expertise to make such a judgment. They will therefore tend to view it as comparatively major, reducing the odds of making a purchase.

This discrepancy appears to stem from a fundamental difference in knowledge between the presenter and the experiencer.

Presenters, who possess in-depth knowledge about the subject matter, often fail to account for the naive perspective of the experiencer fully.

They underestimate the experiencer’s ability to detect the situation’s imperfection and envision its superior, counterfactual version.

“Perhaps another house exists without this “minor” flaw?” is what consumers think to themselves, not “How nice of this salesperson to inform me of the minor nature of this issue, which I have no ability to verify for myself, so I’ll trust them based on their kindness alone.”

However, this discrepancy lessens when the defect is so glaring that even the experiencer notices it and when the experiencer can vividly imagine the superior, counterfactual version.

The Importance of Understanding the Presenter-Experiencer Discrepancy

The insights from this research have significant implications for consumers and marketers alike.

For consumers, being aware that receiving UCI might distort their product evaluation is crucial, especially when they need more knowledge about the product’s variations.

This is important for consumer welfare, as UCI might undermine consumers’ judgments about a product and even prevent them from enjoying the superior alternative in the future.

For marketers, caution is advised when communicating UCI to consumers when promoting and advertising a product.

Marketers need to be sensitive to both the consumers’ knowledge and the severity of the current imperfection when deciding whether to share UCI.

UCI might deter a naive consumer, whereas a refined consumer may be less affected.

If an imperfection is negligible, communicating UCI might be avoided, but if a flaw is obvious, UCI should not hurt consumers’ evaluations much.

The marketer’s honesty might even be beneficial — but if honesty about something minor is empirically deleterious, one should gloss over it rather than share such information.

Ultimately, marketers should do their best to judge whether the imperfection is negligible or evident from the consumers’ perspective rather than their own, which may exaggerate its obviousness.

Sharing upward counterfactual information may seem helpful to improve someone’s impression of a property or situation, but it can have the opposite effect.

By recognizing the presenter-experiencer discrepancy and adjusting your communication strategies accordingly, you can avoid the pitfalls of overcommunication and more effectively present information to clients and customers.