Don’t say your product is “100%”

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📝 Intro

You see it all the time - products or services claiming to be “100%” something. For example:

• 100% satisfaction guaranteed

• 100% pure

• 100% reliable

Everyone does it, so it must work, right?

New scientific research shows this is a classic example of everyone mindlessly jumping on the same bandwagon.

P.S.: When you’re marketing your product, make sure you only highlight the top three selling points - highlighting too many positives can make people skeptical.

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“100%” claims about a product backfire unless they’re giving meaningful information

Topics: Messaging & Copy
For: B2C. Can be tested for B2B
Research date: November 2023
Universities: Bar‐Ilan University, Israel Institute of Technology,

📈 Recommendation

Avoid making claims that your product is “100%” something (e.g. 100% pure, 100% satisfaction guaranteed, or 100% delicious) unless it provides meaningful, relevant information (e.g. 100% cotton, 100% grass-fed, or 100% SSL encrypted).

People will become suspicious of you, like you less, and be less likely to buy.

🎓 Findings

• People have less positive opinions and lower intentions to buy a product when the product highlights an irrelevant claim of being “100%” something.

• As part of a series of 4 experiments, researchers found that people:

  • Judged a juice 7.5% worse when it claimed to be “100% juice” versus “99% juice”. When the phrase was changed to “organic juice” people had the same opinion of the 99% vs 100% organic juice 

  • Thought there was 13.3% less real juice in a juice when it claimed to be 100% juice vs 99%

  • Had 7.5% lower purchase intentions and 7.2% lower opinions of a popsicle when it said it was made from 100% juice vs 99% juice. Saying 99% juice or not saying anything about the juice content at all had the same effect

• The negative effect:

  • Disappears when the 100% claim gives concrete, non-obvious, useful information about the product

  • Exists even when the claim is still absurd, but above 100%. For example, people judged the service at a hotel to be 5.6% lower when the hotel reported “100% satisfaction” versus “101% satisfaction”

🧠 Why it works

• When we see product information making claims we consider irrelevant (e.g. 100% satisfaction guaranteed) it makes us more suspicious of the product and its benefits.

• This suspicious, possibly deceptive claim makes us react negatively.

• So we judge the product more negatively and are less likely to want to buy it.

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✋ Limitations

• The experiments tested one claim (juice content) on only food products. It’s likely - but hasn’t been tested - that the effect applies to other product categories and services (e.g. 100% satisfaction”)

• The research looked at purchase intentions and judgments of the product - it did not test actual purchases.

🏢 Companies using this

• Companies across many categories use 100% claims, although it’s unclear if they look at how meaningful the claim is when choosing to include it.

• Less useful 100% claims that probably backfire include:

  • Staples’ “100% satisfaction guaranteed” label on their stationery items like pencils.

  • Digital data carrier Secure Exchanges’ “100% reliable” claim 

  • Lipton’s “100% natural” label on their teas.

• 100% claims that provide meaningful information include:

  • “100% cotton” labels on clothing and items like Hanes’ cotton face masks.

  • “100% fresh, never frozen” labels on Wendy’s beef products.

  • “Organic. 100% Transparency” labels on One Degree Organic Foods’ products.

Steak-umm’s “100% Delicious” message gives no meaningful information, so is likely to backfire.

⚡ Steps to implement

• Avoid 100% claims if they’re meaningless and don’t provide any useful information to your customers. For example:

  • Unrealistic promises like 100% satisfaction for a product (unless you’re sharing an independent ranking)

  • The content of your product when it’s obvious and doesn’t provide additional details (e.g. 100% juice for a carton of orange juice).

• You can still use 100% claims if they’re useful and provide important information to the customer, for example:

  • Informative or relevant details about product ingredients

    • e.g. 100% organic juice vs 100% juice

    • e.g. 100% cotton or 100% linen for clothing items

  •  Claims about sustainability or organic ingredients (e.g. 100% organic or 100% recycled packaging). Other research indicates these products also earn higher revenues.

  • Information about the location or source of your product (e.g. 100% American Beef ,100% Italian leather or 100% single-source coffee). 

  • Highlighting branded ingredients (e.g. made from 100% pure Hershey's cocoa) can also boost demand and sales.

🔍 Study type

Online experiments.

📖 Research

The effects of pseudo‐relevant 100% claims. Psychology & Marketing (November 2023)

🏫 Researchers

• Nira Munichor, Bar-Ilan University

• Liat Levontin, Israel Institute of Technology

Remember: This is a new scientific discovery. In the future it will probably be better understood and could even be proven wrong (that’s how science works). It may also not be generalizable to your situation. If it’s a risky change, always test it on a small scale before rolling it out widely.

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