Skip to main content Accessibility help
×
Hostname: page-component-586b7cd67f-l7hp2 Total loading time: 0 Render date: 2024-11-26T19:02:48.481Z Has data issue: false hasContentIssue false

7 - On Puffery

from Part II - Understanding Marketing Phenomena

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  29 June 2023

Jacob E. Gersen
Affiliation:
Harvard Law School, Massachusetts
Joel H. Steckel
Affiliation:
New York University
Get access

Summary

Puffery is a concept that purports to be about things consumers ignore and don’t rely on. It is in fact a concept about things courts ignore and won’t rule on. At the moment, marketing and other empirical work has essentially nothing to say about puffery in the courts; puffery consists of precisely the elements of advertising for which courts neither require nor allow empirical evidence of consumer reaction.1 That doesn’t make the doctrine wrong, but it does mean that explanations for the doctrine should not be founded on unsupported, mostly unsupportable judicial assertions about how consumers think and what advertising claims they disregard. Instead, this chapter will argue, puffery should be about what kinds of advertising claims are too difficult to evaluate for their truth in judicial settings. That’s an epistemological determination that judges are actually well qualified to make, unlike the idea that consumers don’t rely on puffery.

Type
Chapter
Information
Publisher: Cambridge University Press
Print publication year: 2023

Access options

Get access to the full version of this content by using one of the access options below. (Log in options will check for institutional or personal access. Content may require purchase if you do not have access.)

Save book to Kindle

To save this book to your Kindle, first ensure [email protected] is added to your Approved Personal Document E-mail List under your Personal Document Settings on the Manage Your Content and Devices page of your Amazon account. Then enter the ‘name’ part of your Kindle email address below. Find out more about saving to your Kindle.

Note you can select to save to either the @free.kindle.com or @kindle.com variations. ‘@free.kindle.com’ emails are free but can only be saved to your device when it is connected to wi-fi. ‘@kindle.com’ emails can be delivered even when you are not connected to wi-fi, but note that service fees apply.

Find out more about the Kindle Personal Document Service.

Available formats
×

Save book to Dropbox

To save content items to your account, please confirm that you agree to abide by our usage policies. If this is the first time you use this feature, you will be asked to authorise Cambridge Core to connect with your account. Find out more about saving content to Dropbox.

Available formats
×

Save book to Google Drive

To save content items to your account, please confirm that you agree to abide by our usage policies. If this is the first time you use this feature, you will be asked to authorise Cambridge Core to connect with your account. Find out more about saving content to Google Drive.

Available formats
×