Understanding Persuasion in Marketing: Models and Strategies

Posted on May 26, 2024 in Other subjects

Session 17: Marketing Models of Persuasion

How do marketers/policy makers persuade consumers?

Answer: Via Marketing Communications (MARCOM) or advertising

What is Persuasion?

Persuasion: A change in opinion, attitude, or behavior due to MARCOM exposure.

Elaboration Likelihood Model

This model explains “how much we/consumers are likely to elaborate/think” about a persuasive message.

• Central Route of Persuasion: Requires more thought/elaboration.
• Peripheral Route of Persuasion: Requires less thought/elaboration.

Two Different Techniques of Persuasion

Change could be brought on either by reason or by subtle cues.

• Reason: Logic, arguments (Central route of persuasion). More permanent effect.
• Subtle Cues: Endorsers, emotions, humor, music, etc. (Peripheral route of persuasion). Short-term effects.

High Involvement Purchase Contexts

• Products: Expensive; durables. Example: Cars, computers, real estate, jewelry, vaccines (Strong argument, logic).
• Situations: Linked to survival.

Low Involvement Purchase Contexts

• Products: Inexpensive, frequently purchased consumer goods. Example: Candy bars, beer, stationery, soft drinks, detergent, paper towels (Celebrity endorsements, sexual imagery, emotional cues, humor, music).
• Personal Context: Of importance/not.

Central or Peripheral?

• Emotional Cue: Recall: Affective Conditioning (Cute endorser) information about product-logic, reasons to purchase over competition.
• Peripheral Cue (Celebrity Endorser): Can also be used in high-involvement situations.

Objectives of a New Advertising Campaign

1. Get their attention.
2. Persuade them to change behavior (or thinking).
   • Comprehension (understand what the ad says).
   • Message Acceptance (agree with what the ad says).
3. Increase recall (remember our name and buy our product, slogan, music).
4. Consumer engagement (excitement about the brand, generate WOM, contests, social influences like the ice bucket challenge).
5. Purchase (the advertised product). Different objectives could be relevant at different points of time.

Session 21: Choice Overload

Why do companies have so many products?

• Battle for attention, competitive pressure.
• “Best fit” with consumers – higher satisfaction.

Why might having too many products be bad?

From a consumer behavior viewpoint:

• People find it overwhelming (limited cognitive capacity).
• People tend to make a snap judgment (suboptimal).
• People defer decisions.
• People turn to a competitor.

Impact of Choice Overload

Those who were shown fewer options were happier with their “selected” partner (compared to those who were shown many more options).

• Counterfactual thinking (“what if I picked…?”)
• Higher expectations (“maybe the other will be better..”)
• Responsibility for failures (“I chose that person out of all my options”)

What Marketers Can Do About Choice Overload

• Cut: Reduce the number of alternatives you offer.
  • Numerous examples of marketplace success after reducing product lines.
• Categorize: Help people navigate their decisions better.
  • Create meaningful categories, pay attention to names of categories.

Challenging Traditional Economic Assumptions

Economists assume that we have stable and coherent preferences and we have the ability to identify options that maximize our utilities.

• People don’t have well-defined preferences most of the time; they construct their preferences at the time of evaluation or purchase.
• We are not so good at estimating what we want right now or in the near future and we’re even worse in predicting what we’ll like in the distant future.

How does context impact choices?

• Presence of other options influence our selection.
• Marketers can use this to push us toward their preferred option.

Context Effects

1. Compromise Effect
2. Attraction Effect (or Decoy effect or Asymmetric Dominance Effect)

Why do we see context effects?

• Preference uncertainty.

Why do people compromise?

• Ease of Justification.
• Aversion of extremes.
• Uncertainty about needs and preferences.

Wide Applications of the Decoy Effect in Marketing

• Finance: Investment decisions are swayed as dominated investment alternatives are added to a portfolio.
• Retail environment: More expensive, similar feature option to boost choice share of higher margin product.
• Wide application in e-commerce space.
• Choice of partners (dating), political candidates.

Session 23: Persuasion and Influence

Six Persuasion Principles

1. Consistency (Commitment)
2. Likeability
3. Social Proof (Consensus)
4. Reciprocity
5. Scarcity
6. Authority

Principle 1: Consistency

• Rooted in Festinger’s theory of “Cognitive Dissonance”:
  • We are motivated to have harmony in our views and behaviors.
  • We like our attitudes and behaviors to be consistent. When they aren’t consistent, we feel tension.
  • We reduce tension by aligning our attitudes and behaviors/commitments.
• The steps (how to use consistency to persuade people):
  • Elicit a small commitment from someone.
  • Their self-image changes (“I am someone who helps you”).
  • Person will naturally comply with subsequent (bigger) requests to be consistent with their view of themselves (else, dissonance).

Principle 2: Liking

We are more willing to comply with the requests of people we like.

Attractive salespeople: Work on the principle of liking (Halo Effect: Attractive people seen to be more intelligent, happier, more successful, more competent).

1. Physical attractiveness (of salespeople, models in ads) Celebrity endorsements.
2. Compliments (flattery).
3. Cooperation (empathy, sympathy).
4. Similarity (even if incidental; opinions, personality traits, background or lifestyle).

Principle 3: Reciprocity

By doing us a favor, others can enhance the chance that we will comply with one of their requests… even if it is an unwanted favor.

Example: Gifting in general, helping someone, charity donation requests with gifts.

Enhance effectiveness of the principle:

• Be the first.
• Personalized gift.
• If possible, unexpected.
• Perceived genuine.

Concessions are met with concessions

• Presented with a LARGE request (expected to refuse), followed by a smaller, more reasonable request (expected to accept).
• Operates due to the reciprocity norm (if I do something nice for you, you should do something nice for me).

Door-in-the-face technique more effective when:

• Same person makes both requests.
• The requests are face-to-face with no delay. Example: Movie/TV censorship.

Principle 4: Social Proof

We should be more willing to comply with a request for behavior if it is consistent with what others around us think or do.

• Festinger’s social comparison theory – we assess ourselves by looking at others.
• In situations of ambiguity or uncertainty, we determine what is correct by observing what other people think is correct.
• When people are unsure what to do, they look to and accept the beliefs and behaviors of similar people.

Principle 5: Scarcity

• We try to secure those products/opportunities that are scarce or dwindling.
• People assign more value to products when they are less available.
• Scarce = valuable. People want more of what they have less access to.
• Generally, an adaptive trait because:
  • Lack of availability can offer a shortcut cue to its quality.
  • As things become less accessible, we lose “freedoms.” How do we respond? Covet them more (teenagers).
  • Rooted in psychological reactance theory.
• High price and desirability.

How do marketers of luxury products employ the scarcity principle?

• High price tag.
• Limited supply/long waiting list.

Principle 6: Authority

We are more willing to follow the suggestions of someone who is a legitimate (credible, knowledgeable) authority figure.

Mere symbols of authority are enough to influence:

1. Titles (professor, doctor…).
2. Clothing (lab coat, guard uniform, well-tailored business suit).
3. Degrees displayed.