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Lectures Marketing and Persuasive Communication
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MARKETING AND PERSUASIVE COMMUNICATIONCollege 1: Introduction
1 September 2020
Persuasive communication: a sender’s attempt to change a receiver’s beliefs, attitudes and behavior.
- Broader than marketing communication
- Foundation of most marketing communication
Marketing communication: persuasive communication, but also: attention/ awareness (memory effects),
consumer choice behavior (biases), branding, targeting strategy (how to find your audience for the
product) and media influence (difference online and offline).
Persuasion: a symbolic process in which communication try to convince other people to change their
attitudes or behavior regarding an issue through the transmission of a message, in an atmosphere of free
choice.
FYI: if it’s not intended, it’s no persuasion.
Persuasion; application areas
Corporate sphere
o Marketing communication
o Sales/ negotiations
Humor is important in persuading
Images are very important
o Motivating/ leadership
o Online campaigns/ influencers
Public sphere
o Health communication
o Politics, societal debates
Individual sphere
o Relations
o Education/ family life
Persuasive communication; scientific approach
Why do we need it?
People often do not understand their own beliefs, attitudes and behavioral motives… let alone
those of others!
We need objective evidence to understand why people change their behavior
How do we get this evidence?
o Just ask (in a street survey)
Halo-effect: good qualities get linked to good looking people.
Good looking people are seen as more intelligent, nicer, more outgoing more positive responses,
credible, reliable more persuasive better jobs, etc.
This is why we run experiments!
We can manipulate the independent variable
o Good vs. less good-looking
We can measure its effects on the dependent variable(s)
, o Perceived intelligence
College 2: Attitudes and balance
2 September 2020
Atmosphere of free choice
In case of unequal power/ hierarchical contexts there is no free choice.
Hence: no persuasive communication.
Attitude: a psychological tendency that is expressed by evaluating a particular entity with some degree of
favor or disfavor (you can also have a neutral attitude). It’s cognitive, thought about.
Key characteristics of attitudes:
Tendency: longer than emotions, shorter than personality traits.
o It isn’t stable but doesn’t change to much; it’s more stable than emotions but more unstable
than personality traits.
o How to change this rather stable concept?
Learned: through experience or other.
Evaluative: has a valence (positive-negative) and intensity (weak-strong).
Directed at object: person, issue, group, etc.
Attitude functions (exam question!)
Attitudes are (psychologically) useful
Ego-defensive function
o Attitudes help maintain a positive self-image.
o In- vs. outgroup: negative attitudes toward other groups confirms own superiority.
o E.g., negative attitudes toward immigrants.
Value-expressive function
o People want to express their identity.
o Attitudes help to express central values, obtain social approval.
o E.g., liking classical music to show refinement, class.
Instrumental function
o Attitudes and associated behavior (approach; avoid) will help obtaining positive outcomes.
o Usually result from learning processes (rewards and punishments).
o E.g., children develop positive attitudes based on associated positive outcomes.
Knowledge function
o Attitudes organize our thinking; make the world understandable/ predictable.
o Attitudes help us predict how people will respond/ situation will work out.
o E.g., ‘good guys vs. bad guys.’
Social adjustive function
o People like others with similar beliefs.
o Expressing attitudes helps in forming or maintaining (or blocking) relationships.
o You can also take over attitudes of other people, you start to like the same things.
Expectancy-value approach; attitudes are constructed from beliefs (positive and negative) and these beliefs
have a strength.
Attitude= strengths of beliefs X evaluations of these beliefs
College 3: Cognitive dissonance
4 September 2020
Balance theory
,Keeping your attitude and beliefs in balance. When there’s disbalance you try to solve this.
How to reduce imbalance?
Denial
o No, it doesn’t really happen or at least it is not that bad.
Compensation
o It does break, but it is so nice.
Differentiation
o You differentiate about the particular object. It’s not the whole camper but only the motor.
You make the problem tinier.
Transcendence
o It’s just the way it is.
FYI: only triangles with 0 or 2 minuses are ‘in balance’.
Cognitive dissonance (problem)
Deals with relations between cognitive elements (attitudes, beliefs, behavior). E.g., eating bad food and
doing sport.
Three possible relations:
Irrelevant
Consonant
o Make things ‘right’ for the dissonant thoughts.
Dissonant
o You think two things that don’t match.
o You believe two things that are dissonant.
Dissonant Consonant
I smoke Smoking is bad for my health Smoking keeps me slim
It’s something I do with my friends
I have a great office coffee cup I always burn my hands on it I got it from my daughter
Assumptions
People do not like inconsistent cognition (see Heider’s balance theory).
Dissonance is an aversive state. It doesn’t match your mindset.
People are motivated to reduces dissonance. You are motivated to solve the problem.
Dissonance (and their answers) are everywhere.
Degree of dissonance
Degree of cognitive dissonance=
(i.e., importance & amount of dissonant cognitions compared to importance & amount of consonant
cognitions).
How can dissonance be resolved?
E.g., The Corona measures make my life miserable.
1. The importance of the dissonant cognitions can be reduced.
a. E.g., the Corona measures prevent the spread of the virus, but maybe it should be spread a
little bit.
2. The dissonant cognitions can be changed.
a. E.g., I don’t believe Corona measures help to prevent the spread of the virus.
, 3. Consonant cognitions can be added.
a. E.g., the virus is not dangerous at all; it’s like a flue.
b. No-one really dies of Corona.
4. Importance of consonant cognitions can be increased
a. E.g., corona measures are installed to control the population. I will never be controlled!
Areas of application
1. Decision making: choice behavior/ rationalization
a. ‘Dissonance is a post-decision phenomenon’.
b. The more similar the alternatives, the more dissonance.
c. Dissonance greatest just after choice.
d. Dissonance reduction after choice: ‘spreading of alternatives’. You think of things why your
choice is the best and why the other option would be worse.
2. Mass communication: selective exposure
a. People seek information that confirms their attitudes.
b. People avoid information that contradicts their attitudes.
c. Klapper (1960): Minimal effects of mass media through selective exposure?
3. Marketing: induced compliance
a. Festinger & Carlsmith (1959)
i. What happens to a person’s attitude if that person has to engage in behavior that
goes against this attitude?
ii. Participants perform a (very) tedious task
iii. 1/3 gets $1, 1/3 gets $20 to explain to others that the job is a lot of fun and 1/3
doesn’t have to do it.
iv. Result: participants in the $1 condition begin to rate the task more positively.
v. Explanation: $20 is a better excuse to lie than $1, $1 causes more dissonance
(negative reward effect).
4. Business, policy: sunk costs (cost that occurred and cannot be recovered)
a. E.g., gambling on Horses.
b. Right after placing bet, people overestimate the chances of winning (more than before)
i. The idea that money was wrongly invested creates dissonance.
c. Throwing bad money after good money (Concore effect).
i. Many large infrastructural projects.
ii. Stick to loss-making stocks.
iii. If you have invested a lot you want to finish it.
5. Education: hypocrisy induction
a. Stone et al., 1994: Safe Sex Information
b. 2 groups of students: (1) hypocrisy condition: speech about reasons for unsafe sex, (2)
control condition.
c. Dependent var.: purchase condoms.
d. Students bought more often and more condoms in the hypocrisy condition.
Sweeney & Gruber (1984)
Research with data from 1973, at the time of Watergate.
3 groups (82 participants):
o Undecided
o Democrats (voted McGovern and were dissatisfied with the election outcome
o Republicans (voted Nixon voted and were satisfied with the election outcome)
3 wave panel design
Selective exposure measurements:
Recent interest in politics
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