In marketing communication, as in interpersonal communication, there is a presumption that people can detect deception as it is occurring and, therefore, protect themselves from the deceptive intent of the message. The Park-Levine probability model (Park & Levine, 2001) posits that in interpersonal situations the veracity judgment is a function of the receiver's truth-bias and the base rate of untruthful messages evaluated. The original model was supported by empirical testing. The study presented here extends the Park-Levine model in two ways. First, it provides a conceptual replication using marketing claims such as those found in advertising or other marketing communications to support the model. Second, it shows that truth-bias toward marketing claims and, subsequently, accuracy of detection is moderated by the presence or absence of a brand and by information search characteristics that determine whether or not the claim can be verified prior to purchase. Results demonstrate that the model can be generalized to non-interpersonal situations and that factors influencing accuracy need to recognize the interaction between truth-bias and base rates in order to be meaningful interpreted.
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