Product efficacy is an important driver of product evaluation and product usage. This research examines how marketers can improve perceived and actual product efficacy. Given the managerial ease of adjusting product design, we demonstrate that adding a sensory signal (e.g., tingling, cooling, fizzing) to a product that promises positive outcomes would improve product evaluations and actual product efficacy. In five studies (and two additional studies reported in the Web Appendix), we show that sensory signaling (vs. nonsignaling) products elicit actual product choice and improve product evaluations, repurchase likelihood, recommendation likelihood, as well as objective measures of product efficacy (such as consumer performance). This occurs because the sensory signals make consumers feel a greater transfer of benefits to the body during product usage. We further demonstrate that the effect holds even when persuasion knowledge is activated. Together, this research provides important insights on product designs that benefit not only marketers but also consumers.

产品功效是产品评价和产品使用的重要驱动力。这项研究探讨了营销人员如何提高感知和实际的产品功效。鉴于调整产品设计在管理上很容易，我们证明，在承诺积极结果的产品中添加感官信号（例如，刺痛感、清凉感、嘶嘶声）将改善产品评估和实际产品功效。在五项研究（以及网络附录中报告的另外两项研究）中，我们表明，感官信号（与非信号）产品会引发实际的产品选择，并改善产品评估、重新购买可能性、推荐可能性以及产品功效的客观衡量标准（例如消费者表现）。出现这种情况是因为感官信号使消费者在产品使用过程中感受到更大的益处转移到身体上。我们进一步证明，即使激活说服知识，这种效果仍然存在。总之，这项研究提供了有关产品设计的重要见解，不仅使营销人员受益，而且使消费者受益。