Consumers Prefer Products That Work Using Directionally Consistent Causal Chains
研究发现，消费者更偏好那些因果步骤方向一致（如全为增加或全为减少）的产品描述，因为这种一致性更容易理解，从而让消费者觉得产品更有效。
Abstract Products often aim to help consumers achieve desired outcomes such as increasing energy levels or removing fabric stains. These products typically work via rich causal paths. The current research suggests that the structure of these paths influences consumer judgments of product efficacy. In particular, sequential steps in these paths can evoke distinct directionalities—either increasing or decreasing variables in each step along the way. For example, a face cream could be described as “increasing the turnover of skin cells to reduce wrinkles.” Under our framework, the action influencing skin cells would correspond to increasing directionality, while the action influencing wrinkles would correspond to decreasing directionality. Ten experiments provide evidence that consumers prefer products with directionally consistent causal chains (i.e., all steps evoking the same directionality) over those with directionally inconsistent ones (i.e., steps evoking contrasting directionalities). This occurs because consumers find directionally consistent causal chains easier to process, which in turn leads them to infer higher efficacy from products working via such consistent chains. These findings advance our understanding of how consumers evaluate product descriptions and provide prescriptions for marketers tasked with composing product descriptions to convey efficacy.