Michael Thomas, an assistant professor of marketing at the University of Missouri, did something that decades of advertising researchers thought was impossible: he proved that puffery actually works. For generations, courts and consumer-protection regulators have assumed that when brands sprinkle words like "charming," "cozy," and "lovely" into their marketing, consumers simply tune them out. A groundbreaking study published in the Journal of Marketing Research challenges that assumption entirely, revealing that these seemingly harmless flourishes quietly shape real purchasing decisions.
The challenge has always been isolation. In traditional advertising, slogans are locked to brands and rarely change, making it nearly impossible to tell whether a tagline actually influences behavior or just rides on decades of brand reputation. Thomas found the perfect testing ground in an unexpected place: Airbnb. The platform's rental listings are constantly evolving. Hosts routinely tweak their descriptions while the underlying property remains unchanged—a rare opportunity to observe how language alone moves the needle on consumer choice.
Using data from more than 219,000 listings, Thomas analyzed how wording changes affected booking rates over time. The results were unmissable. Adding subjective praise words such as "charming," "cozy," or "lovely" boosted bookings by approximately 0.2%—roughly equivalent to adding an objective claim about a concrete amenity or location detail. That might sound small, but Thomas notes that at the scale of hundreds of thousands of listings, the pattern becomes undeniable. "When you see the same effect across so many properties, it tells you something meaningful is happening," he said. To manage such a massive volume of text, Thomas enlisted ChatGPT to break down listing descriptions into individual claims and classify which ones qualified as puffery under established legal standards—an approach he validated against real court cases.
What makes this finding even more striking is what it doesn't show: buyer's remorse. Consumer protection advocates have long worried that puffery could lure people into purchases they regret. But the Airbnb reviews paint a different picture. Guests who booked listings with subjective praise words showed no sign of dissatisfaction compared to those who didn't. The puffery worked, and it worked without leaving a trail of disappointed customers.
The implications stretch far beyond rental properties. While objective details—location, amenities, price—remain essential to consumer decision-making, Thomas's research suggests that when this foundational information is readily available and transparent, puffery can push demand even higher. For individual sellers navigating crowded marketplaces, the message is clear: carefully chosen words matter. For established brands and regulators, the findings open a trickier conversation about how language shapes behavior at scales we're only now equipped to measure.
As courts continue to treat puffery as harmless fluff, Thomas's work offers a quiet but firm counterargument. These words aren't meaningless filler. They're doing real work in the world—and now, we have the data to prove it.