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Lecture 14: Attitude change and Persuasive communication; Consumer…
Lecture 14: Attitude change and Persuasive communication; Consumer behaviour and marketing
Attitude change and persuasive communication
a. What is persuasion?
The process by which a person’s attitudes or behaviour are, without duress, influenced by communications from other people.
Persuasive communication:
Message that advocates a position
implicitly or explicitly presents argument(s) to support that position
b. What can we do to persuade people (models of persuasive attitude change)?
Consistency assumption (Eagly & Chaiken, 1993): The three components of attitudes tend to be consistent with each other
Thus persuasive communication need to only change one of three components for others to come under pressure to change in the same way to achieve consistency
• We can persuade people by changing their emotions (affect)
• We can persuade people by changing their behaviours – cognitive dissonance
1) Induced compliance study (Festinger & Carlsmith, 1959)
Findings explained by cognitive dissonance theory (Festinger, 1957)
Induced compliance is a situation in which someone is instructed or otherwise compelled to act in a way that is contrary to their beliefs or evaluations
Study involved participants performing a boring task and being rewarded for (falsely) telling other people that the task was interesting.
Results
When subsequently asked to truthfully evaluate the task, those who had been given a lower reward evaluated it more favourably than those given a higher reward
2) Ways to reduce dissonance
Remove or change dissonant behaviour to be consistent with cognition
Quit smoking
Justify behavior by reducing the importance of a dissonant cognition and / or increasing the importance of a consonant cognition
“Even though smoking is bad for health, a short life is better than a life with no pleasures”
Justify behavior by modifying or adding new consonant cognition.
Modifying: “Some people smoke but are healthy. Smoking does not necessarily lead to bad health” Adding: “Only heavy smoking is bad for health”
• We can persuade people by changing their cognitions in response to a message
The Yale model (Hovland et al.,1953)
Identified 4 steps in the persuasion process:
• Attention: Intended audience must notice the message
• Comprehension: Audience must understand the message
• Acceptance: Audience must believe in the message
• Retention: The message must be remembered by the audience.
Factors of the yale model
Source factors (who said)
Credibility
Likeability
Message factors (what is said)
Emotional appeal (peripheral factor)
Rational/factual appeal (central factor)
Audience factors (said to whom)
Target audience:
Necessary to manipulate both message content and source content in relation to target audience
Audience are more likely to be persuaded when they are distracted (not giving much attention)
What will be the outcome?
Attitude change
Dual process models of attitude change
Effective application of persuasive techniques also requires an understanding of different routes to persuasion as identified in recently developed dual- process models of attitude change
3) Chaiken’s (1980) Heuristics Systematic Model
what is it
distinction between systematic processing where people consider the arguments and heuristic processing where people use cognitive ‘short cuts’
2 more items...
2) Petty and Cacioppo’s (1981) Elaboration Likelihood Model
What is it
distinguishes the central and peripheral routes to persuasion, which differ in the amount of scrutiny or elaboration required
2 more items...
c. Resistance to persuasion
McGuire’s (1968) inoculation theory: To prevent persuasion, pre-existing attitudes need to be strengthened.
This can begin by making the audience aware of the potential vulnerability of their existing attitude by exposing it to an inoculation message (a relatively weak argument against the pre-existing attitude)
this threat initiates defences against future, stronger attacks.
Consumer behavior and marketing
a. What is the study of consumer behavior?
Examines the reasons behind people’s decisions to buy certain products
their reactions towards the four P’s of marketing: Product, price, promotion and place
Product
Price
Promotion
Place
most important aspect of this concerns people’s attitudes towards the product
b. Connection between social psychology and consumer behavior - role of attitudes towards product in consumer behavior
c. What affects consumer behaviour?
i. Persuasive communication (recap earlier section)
Marketing
ii. Marketing strategies
Advertising agency Foote, Cone and Belding (FCB) distinguishes products
requiring ‘feeling’ vs. ‘thinking’ processing
and between high vs. low involvement
Echoes dual-process model assumptions
gives rise to a range of marketing strategies – successful marketing strategies make use of different forms of appeals
iii. Implicit processes - subliminal advertising and product placement
Subliminal advertising: Advertising slogans that are presented so briefly that they are below threshold of awareness
Banned in several countries but evidence mixed
Effectiveness limited to brands not readily accessible in consumers’ minds
Product placement: Place products in movie scenes etc to implicitly communicate their quality or desirability
can be seen as form of subliminal advertising
discouraged in UK
iv. Branding
➢ Branding (together with price) plays key role in consumer behaviour
➢ associated beliefs and feelings lead to inferences about quality
➢ encourage stronger identification between consumers and a product or its producer to cement repeat consumption (refer to lecture 18 corporate communications)
➢ However, price may be a barrier to purchase
➢ deliberate appeal to both central/systematic processes and peripheral/heuristic ones
Other social psychological processes that are not specific to consumption
v. Emotions affect consumption
People’s consumption can vary from their usual patterns, as a result of life events that generate strong emotional responses, leading them to reassess their usual consumption priorities (Mathur et al., 2008)
e.g. people buying more things during covid due to boredom or anxiety
vi. Consumption affected by social identity and impression management (recap lecture 6)
Possessions allow people to affirm membership within a group, and differentiate themselves from other groups
offer opportunities for self-expression (recap Lecture 6: Goffman’s dramaturgical theory of impression management – props)
Implications for branding strategy: some companies modify their branding strategy to move away from a narrow emphasis on functional attributes towards a focus on a consumer’s lifestyle.
vii. Culture affects consumption
consumption patterns vary across cultures, with consequences for marketing
marketing in Eastern Asian cultures tends to emphasise conformity: Koreans most influenced by advertisements stressing interdependence and social standing - group benefits (Han & Shavitt, 1994)
marketing in the West tends to highlight uniqueness: Americans most influenced by advertisements stressing products enhance independence /self-improvement - personal benefits
viii. Larger environmental factors affect consumption