Proceedings of the Annual Meeting of the Cognitive Science Society

Messages that are tailored to specific audiences (matched messages) are typically more persuasive compared tomessages that are crafted for a general audience (Hirsh, Kang, & Bodenhauser, 2012). However, tailoring messages can havethe effect that messages are less persuasive for audiences for which they were not tailored (mismatched messages; Sillince,Jarzabkowski, & Shaw, 2012). Eisenberg (1984) introduced the concept of strategic ambiguity to appeal to multiple audiencessimultaneously. We systematically compared effects of matched/mismatched tailored messages with the effects of ambiguousmessages on multiple-criteria choice behavior. We found evidence that ambiguous messages can be used under certain con-ditions to simultaneously appeal to multiple audiences within the context of credit card choices. Using the financial controltypology developed by Shefrin and Nicols (2014) to define different audiences, the study (154 participants) provided somesupport for the use of ambiguity as a tool for tailoring messages to diverse credit-card holders.