Marketing and persuasive communication lectures
Lecture 1 introduction
Persuasive communication: a sender’s attempt to change a receiver’s beliefs, attitudes, and behavior
Persuasive communication is broader than marketing communication
Marketing communication = persuasive communication, but also:
- Attention/awareness (memory effects)
- Branding
- Targeting & positioning
- Channels (online vs. offline)
- Strategy & campaign design
- Etc.
Persuasion: application areas
- Corporate spere:
◼ Marcom, advertising
◼ Sales/negotiations
◼ Motivating/leadership
◼ Online campaigns/influencing
- Public sphere:
◼ Health com
◼ Pol com, public opinion
- Individual sphere:
◼ Friends, relationships
◼ Kids/upbringing
◼ Neighbours, bus drivers, shop owners, bosses
Why do we need a scientific approach to persuasion:
- 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
Good looking people are seen as more intelligent, nicer, more outgoing
- Effect: more positive responses, credible, reliable
- Effect: more persuasive
- Effect: better (paid) jobs, nicer partners
By a street survey we would probably find no relation between attractiveness and intelligence:
, - People do not admit that they think there is such a relation (political correctness/social
desirability)
- People are not aware that they make this connection
Persuasion (definition by Perloff): a symbolic process in which communicators try to convince other
people to change their attitudes or behaviour regarding an issue through the transmission of a
message, in an atmosphere of free choice
So:
- Symbolic process -> communication
- Intentional influence
- Beliefs, attitudes and behavior
- Sender, receiver, message, object, context
- Receiver has free choice
News may influence attitudes, but there usually is no persuasive intent. If there is persuasive intent ->
persuasion
Lecture 2 attitudes (and balance)
Persuasion is a symbolic process in which communicators 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
In case of unequal power/hierarchical contexts there is no free choice, hence: no persuasive
communication
What are attitudes?
- A mental and neural state of readiness, organized through experience, exerting a directive
and dynamic influence upon the individual’s response to all objects and situation with which
it is related
- The predisposition of the individual to evaluate a particular object in a favorable or
unfavourable manner
- A tendency to respond in a consistently favourable or unfavourable manner with respect to a
given object
- A psychological tendency that is expressed by evaluating a particular entity with some degree
of favor of disfavor
Key characteristics of attitudes:
- Tendency: longer than emotions, shorter than personality traits
- Learned: through experience or other
- Evaluative: has a valence (positive or negative) and intensity (weak or strong)
, - Directed at object: person, issue, group, etc.
Attitude functions:
- Attitudes are (psychologically) useful
- Katz (1960): ego-defensive, value-expressive, instrumental and knowledge function
- Smith, Bruner & White (1956): social adjustive function
(1) Knowledge function of attitudes:
- Attitudes organize our thinking; make the world understandable/predictable
- Attitudes help us predict how people will respond/situation will work out
- E.g. good guys vs. bad guys
(2) Instrumental function:
- Attitudes and associated behaviour (approach; avoid) will help obtaining positive outcomes
- Usually result from learning processes (rewards and punishments): e.g. children develop
positive attitudes based on associated positive outcomes
(3) Ego-defensive function:
- Attitudes help maintain a positive self-image
- In- vs. outgroup: negative attitudes toward other groups confirms own superiority
- E.g. negative attitudes toward immigrants
(4) Value-expressive function:
- People want to express their identity
- Attitudes help to express central values, obtain social approval
- E.g. liking classical music to show refinement
(5) Social adjustment
- People like others with similar beliefs
- Expressing attitudes helps in forming or maintaining (or blocking) relationships
Expectancy-value approach (Fishbein & Ajzen, 1975):
- Attitude = strengths of beliefs x evaluations of these beliefs
Attitude toward Kanye West:
- Beliefs about Kanye?
- Strength of beliefs?
- Evaluation of beliefs?
Beliefs:
- Kanye = weird, unhinged -> negative
- Kanye = talented, creative -> positive
Strengths of beliefs:
- Accessibility: “ran for president!?”
, - Relative (personal) importance of belief: “I hate arrogant people”
- Certainty of belief: “Is he a right wing extremist now or just a bit unhinged..?”
- Uniqueness of belief: “Kim Kardashian’s ex-husband”
Measuring attitudes:
Lecture 3 cognitive dissonance
Before cognitive dissonance: balance theory (Heider, 1946)
An example of the balance theory is the owner having a car they
love, but it breaks down a lot (the imbalance)
In similar schemes, there is spoken of a balance when there are 0
or 2 minuses.
How to reduce imbalance?
- Denial: the car does not break down all the time
, - Bolstering: to support something or make something stronger; I love the car so much, it
doesn’t matter that it breaks down
- Differentiation: I love the car, it is just the engine inside I don’t like (this can be fixed)
- Integration/transcendence: ignorance of the problem, you are above it
Cognitive dissonance (Leon Festinger 1957):
- How people persuade themselves.
Background:
- Deals with relations between cognitive elements (attitudes, beliefs, behavior)
- Three possible relations:
1. Irrelevant
2. Consonant
3. Dissonant
Examples of dissonance:
Assumptions:
- People do not like inconsistent cognitions
- Dissonance is an aversive state
- People are motivated to reduce dissonance
Degree of cognitive dissonance = (dissonant cognitions x importance) : (consonant cognitions x
importance)
How can dissonance be resolved:
- The importance of the dissonant cognitions can be reduced
- The dissonant cognitions can be changed
- Consonant cognitions can be added
- The importance of consonant cognitions can be increased
Dissonance between beliefs/behavior, what can you do?
- Change beliefs/attitudes
- Change behavior
- Try not to care (transcendence)
, Areas of application:
1. Decision making: choice behavior
2. Mass communication: selective exposure
3. Marketing: induced compliance
4. Business, policy: sunk costs
5. Education: hypocrisy induction
(1) Decision making: choice behavior/rationalization:
- Dissonance is a post-decision phenomenon
- The more similar the alternatives, the more dissonance
- Dissonance greatest just after choice
- Dissonance reduction after choice: spreading of alternatives
(2) Mass communication: selective exposure:
- Selective exposure hypothesis:
◼ People seek information that confirms their attitudes
◼ People avoid information that contradicts their attitudes
- Klapper (1960): minimal effects of mass media through selective exposure? Selective
exposure may subsequently determine attitudes and behavior
(3) Induced compliance
(Festinger & Carlsmith 1959)
- What happens to a person’s attitude if that person has to engage in behavior that goes
against this attitudes?
- Participant perform a very tedious task. 1/3 gets $1, 1/3 gets $20 to explain that the job is a
lot of fun, and 1/3 doesn’t have to
- Results: participants in the $1 conditions begin to rate the task more positively
- Explanation: $20 is a better excuse to lie than $1, $1 causes more dissonance
- Induces compliance is also applied in marketing by for instance making products expensive
and difficult to obtain on purpose
(4) Sunk cost:
Gambling on horses (Knox and Inkster, 1968):
- Right after placing bet, people overestimate chances of winning (more than before)
◼ The idea that money was wrongly invested creates dissonance and therefore people tend
to overestimate their investment
- Throwing bad money after good money (Concorde effect):
◼ People investing more in failing project as there has already been invested large sums of
money
(5) Education & hypocrisy induction
