The Importance of Persuasion in Marketing
1.Persuasion in marketing means the ability to influence the buying behaviors and attitudes of the consumers in the market. It is not only important for increasing the sales revenue but also to create a positive mindset of the company among the customers. Influencing the attitudes and behaviors through various promotional strategies can help in enabling successful marketing and persuade them to try out the products and services of a company. The persuasive marketing enables communication between the business and its customers and ensures proper decision making at the subconscious level. This even requires the support of the marketers to consider the psychological aspects regarding the purchasing behaviors of the customers. By understanding the persuasive factors, it would also be easy for the marketers to persuade the people to choose from what they want to purchase.
According to chapter 1, there are various principles related to the persuasive marketing where influence can be placed such as the reciprocity, authority, commitment, social proof, linking and scarcity. The reciprocity allows for providing something to gain something. It is important to provide the clients or customers with something that can make him feel lucky and the thing shall be convenient enough to fulfill the needs and requirements of the customers too. The authority means gaining a mindset before buying something from the company and gaining the trust and loyalty. The consumers follow the messages and content regarding the products and services delivered by the company to gain a positive mindset and behavior of purchasing those. Social proof means the consumers will likely purchase the products and services that are most suitable and have been purchased on large numbers by the other people (Jenkin et al., 2014).
Based on the Social Judgment Theory in Chapter 2, the messages and information that are produced and delivered to the customers can enable changes in attitudes and behaviors through the process of making judgments and gaining immediate effects. According to this theory, the individual who receives the messages can assess the position represented with the help of this message. It can also drive changes in the attitudes and behaviors. The efficiency of the transfer of messages during persuasive communication is dependent upon the point of view that it represents as well as adapts the messages to the recipients. Based on the social judgment theory, changes in attitudes and behaviors occur in two stages (Thorson & Moore, 2013). At first, the individual who receives the messages assesses the position represented by the message whereas the other step enables to change the attitudes after the judgments depending upon the amount and direction of the change. To obtain the judgments of the individuals associated with the business organizations, Ordered Alternatives questionnaire is developed to obtain the responses of the people and ensure that messages are properly transmitted to them for influencing their behaviors and attitudes. (Miles, 2015). The individuals perceive messages that fall within the rejection latitude and this kind of situation is known as the contrast.
Principles of Persuasion in Marketing
Based on Chapter 3, Functional attitude theory states that the values, beliefs and attitudes are essential aspects that can influence the psychological functions and influence the behaviors of the customers too in making purchases. The attitudes and behaviors are influential for multiple processes including being useful, related to the values and beliefs, decreasing the effects of cognitive disagreement (Bhui & Ibrahim, 2013). The attitudes and behaviors present among the individuals are responsible for psychological functioning as well as determine whether the individual possess an accurate behavior or not. The utilitarian attitudes and social adjustive attitudes are based on how other people are accustomed with the brand and how often they purchase the products and services. If the feedbacks are positive, then through word of mouth promotions, other customers would likely to purchase too and become loyal customers in the future as well.
According to the 4th chapter revolving around the belief-based models of attitude, the attitudes are developed within a person as a function when the person has some kind of belief regarding the product or service that is being purchased. An individual can have multiple beliefs and a value regarding a product and it is the responsibility of the marketer to ensure that the attitudes of an individual are determined and their minds are filled with positive beliefs related to the products and services (Sparks, Perkins & Buckley, 2013). Thus, the belief-based models are concerned with the attitudes and behaviors of the individuals towards a particular product or service that has been bought by the individual. The connection between the belief strength and belief evaluation can be evaluated to understand the beliefs of the individual towards the object. In terms of marketing, the attitudes are considered as aspects of interest for a particular brand and its products or services along with the salient beliefs that are concerned with the features of a specific brand product (Li, 2013).
Therefore, it is important for the marketers to investigate the attitudes and behaviors of the consumers towards a specific brand, which can further help in determining the belief strength and belief evaluation related to the salient features of the brand product. The alternative persuasive strategies are considered as important according to the belief-based models for changing the attitudes of the clients and find out ways by which they can be appealed to the concerned brand products (Tussyadiah, Wang & Jia, 2016).
Based on the chapter 4, it is also found that there is correlation between the consumers’ attitudes towards the product and the attitude that has been predicted according to the summative formula. The attitudes among the clients are formed according to the salient values and beliefs of theirs regarding the products and services that they have purchased from the company. Various investigations are done to understand the importance of attributes that are relevant to the ways of predicting the attitudes and behaviors. The beliefs create impacts on the attitudes and behaviors of the individuals, because of which, it is important to expose them to the information and messages delivered by the marketers (Hsieh, Hsieh & Tang, 2012).
Social Judgment Theory and Persuasion in Marketing
According to the Reasoned action theory in Chapter 6, the behaviors and attitudes of the individuals are influenced by voluntary actions undertaken along with volitional control. One of the most important determinant of the actions undertaken can be the behavioral intention of the organization persuade the feelings of the customers (Petty, Cacioppo & Kasmer, 2015). The theory has established a good connection between the intentions, behaviors of people and individual perception too. This kind of theory enables reasoning and enhancement of thinking capabilities to judge the perception of the customers regarding the brand and heck whether they are involved with brand and how much.
Based on the Stage Models presented in Chapter 7, it is used to develop behavioral interventions considering the six stages including the basic science, generating the intervention procedures, refinement, modification and changes at the first stage. The next stage consists of the adaptation procedures and pilot testing while the traditional efficacy testing is done for the next stage. The efficacy testing with the real world providers, effectiveness of research and research consisting of distribution and implementation of data and information are the next stages that are followed (Koekemoer, 2014). The Stage model was used to identify and clarify the various activities that are associated with the development of behavioral interventions. It could not only create ease in understanding the behaviors and attitudes but at the same time, would administer an intervention procedure in the real world (Montano & Kasprzyk, 2015).
Stage 0 is associated with the basic sciences that are managed before the development of interventions. In this stage, the mechanisms of changes are identified for clarifying the basic questions related to the changes in behaviors and assisting in the intervention development too. Stage I involves the various activities that are used to test the behavioral interventions as well as manage the modifications, adaptation to certain behavioral aspects and even changing the behaviors to make decision or choice. The Stage II involves testing the behavioral interventions based on various experiments managed during the research settings (Li, 2013).
Stage III involves testing the behavioral interventions in community settings, i.e., lacing the customers’ needs and preferences at first and then influencing their choices and decisions. It is known as the hybrid stage. Stage IV enables to maximize the external validity and reliability keeping in mind the actual outcomes due to the behavioral interventions developed within the community for influencing consumer behavior. The last stage could support the development, implementation and adoption of the interventions that would be considered as effective for influencing behaviors and attitudes among the customers, in terms of marketing (Hasford, Hardesty & Kidwell , 2015).
Functional Attitude Theory and Persuasion in Marketing
According to Chapter 8, Elaboration Likelihood Model represents the two aspects that can persuade individuals such as central and peripheral with the consideration of proper ideas, content and arguments. According to the model, there are various ways of processing the stimuli and deriving outcomes for managing changes of attitudes and behaviors. The central route to persuasion allows the individuals, from the consumer marketing perspective, to gain knowledge about the information presented by the marketers (Font & McCabe, 2017). This helps in elaborating the messages and information properly as well as manages changes in attitudes and behaviors. On the other hand, the peripheral route to persuasion mainly occurs when the reliability of the message source is identified and the quality of messages or information that are being delivered. The effectiveness of the elaboration of messages can be determined with the evaluation of motivation of the individuals and arguments presented by them (Yzer, 2013).
From the chapter 9, the effects of persuasion can be understood like how the companies will be able to influence the choices and decisions made by the customers. The marketers could use social media platforms to persuade the customers and make them obtain the right kinds of messages and information related to the products and services delivered to them (Suls & Wheeler, 2013). The persuasion effects can be determined with the attitudes of the consumers and understanding the degree of elaboration of the consumers. The ways by which, consumers process information can help in determining the level of persuasion and its effects.
2.The examining of changes in behaviors can be facilitated by the development of interventions, furthermore achieve the goals and objectives of managing positive behaviors among the customers and influencing them to make purchases. The dual process theory is an important concept in psychology that demonstrates how behavioral changes can be experienced and even thoughts can arise among the individuals. There are two processes, due to which the thoughts can arise or behavioral changes may be experienced. The two major processes include the implicit or automatic process and unconscious or explicit process (Mairesse et al., 2012). The explicit processes are verbalized approaches that may be influenced with persuasion or knowledge obtaining while the implicit process can be subjected to changes with the development of new habits, attitudes and behaviors.
The dual process theory is mainly utilized in the fields of social, personality, clinical and cognitive psychology. The dual process theories are popular nowadays and have been considered as two ways of thinking about the information. The dual process theories are nearly similar though it has differentiated between the superficial mode and systematic way of thinking (Wyer Jr, 2014). The various factors associated with this kind of theory can make the people think carefully about the information obtained, furthermore make early predictions about how it may create an impact on the choices, judgments, decisions made and attitudes possessed by the individuals.
Belief-based Models of Attitude and Persuasion in Marketing
The Dual process theory focuses on how the individuals think about the social information and how it influences the thoughts and emotions among the individuals. From the consumer marketing perspective, the ability of individuals to capture the social information and analyzing that will also influence the thought process as well as enable changes in their attitudes and behaviors, furthermore make a proper decision in the end. The two dual processes are heuristic systematic model of information processing and elaboration likelihood model (Mishina, Block & Mannor, 2012). The heuristic-systematic model of information processing or HSM is one of the most effective communication models, according to the dual process theory, which enables the individuals to process the messages and information transferred to them. It can be done by them through both heuristically and systematically. It is used to reduce the utilization of cognitive resources, which often influences the intake and processing of messages and information. The HSM model is similar to the ELM, also known as elaboration likelihood model (Bargh, 2013).
The marketers have chosen the heuristic-systematic model as an effective model of persuasion because it allows for dual thinking about the information. The individuals to whom the messages and information are transferred can go through a careful understanding and enable deep thinking to facilitate the intensive reasoning. The information are thoroughly understood, which further can help in combining and guide successive changes in attitudes, behaviors and judgments. This dual process model is more focused on systematic thinking and requires a great deal of mental effort so that the person can give attention to the messages properly and understand the significance of it (Carpenter, Boster & Andrews, 2013).
The Reasoned Action theory model promotes perceived behavior control to manage the perception of the customers within different market segments to perform a specific action according to the behaviors possessed by them (Campbell, Mohr & Verlegh, 2013). It can enhance the self efficacy as well as improve the perceived ability of the individuals to manage their behavior and make a firm decision regarding whether to purchase or not. If the perceived behavioral control is negative, then the intentions or behaviors of the customers will tend to get negative as well and this can create a negative mindset among them regarding the product, furthermore prevent them from purchasing the product or service (Rawal, 2013).
The elaboration likelihood model or ELM, on the other hand, determines the changes in attitudes and behaviors through two major routes of persuasion. The central route to persuasion allows the individuals to understand the benefits of the information obtained carefully and generate a good amount of cognition. The peripheral route to persuasion is generated due to the respond to stimulus regarding the effectiveness of the messages that are obtained by them. The reliability of the source of information must be kept in mind to understand whether it could keep the individuals motivated and encouraged or not (Cushman & McPhee, 2013).
Reasoned Action Theory and Persuasion in Marketing
One of the examples could be where Woolworths creates a social media platform to reach more customers and made them know about the products and services delivered. This kept them motivated and eases to gain access to the website, which further influenced their buying attitudes.
The attitudes and behaviors developed based on heuristic processing would tend to be less stable and reliable to predict the actual behaviors than the ELM. The ELM though has limitations as well such as lack of detailed information that are experienced while using the systematic processing model. The systematic processing provides the individuals with better judgmental relevant information when compared to the heuristic processing of information model. Thus, it is considered as much more reliable for creating a significant impact on the persuasion when compared to ELM (Kang et al., 2012).
JB Hi Fi, Australia has send emails and provided good content and messages on the company website regarding the new products introduced. They have been able to access the products and checked whether those can fulfill their needs and requirements or not, based on which, the judgmental decisions are made as well.
The value expressive attitudes are the behaviors and attitudes developed within an individual based on the value offered by the products and services that have been purchased by them. Ego defensive attitudes are presented according to the functional attitude theory in Chapter 3, which can make the individuals conserve their self esteem and furthermore enhance own behaviors and attitudes related to purchase through general association (Van Noort, Antheunis & Van Reijmersdal, 2012). It is a common thing that knowledge persuades individuals to make purchases and the individuals possessing knowledge attitudes can understand their need to obtain information and messages provided by the marketers. This would not only influence their behaviors, but could also create a positive mindset among them (O’Keefe, 2016).
3.The persuasive marketing applies human psychology, develops techniques for marketing the products and services for the customers, and enhances the promotion aspect of the marketing mix strategy. This would develop customers’ impulsive behaviors and make them influenced to purchase products and services from the organization consistently, thereby driving the sales and profit level for the company too. In terms of the e-commerce, companies present a website so that the customers can easily access the products and services online and even order those without any need to visit the physical stores.
Stage Models of Behavioral Interventions and Persuasion in Marketing
The persuasion level often decreases due to bad image of the company and it hinders the successful management of communication between the business and its customers. Persuasion is achieved through proper communication depending upon various circumstances, though it makes the company spread messages about the offerings to the customers. Positive attitudes or behaviors are important to be present among the customers, which can make them influenced to purchase the products and services of the company consistently and drive the sales revenue too (Boyland et al., 2012).
The persuasive marketing focuses on the decision making process as well by combining the right promotional messages and ensuring application of human psychology at the same time to influence the buying behaviors of the customers. The development of a webpage could create proper promotional messages and information, furthermore encourage the visitors of the website to follow the pre-planned pathways and undertake various actions or make decisions regarding purchase. This would also place free reign of choice about how they would interact with the website and search for the products and services offered by the company (O’Keefe, 2016).
Based on the persuasive contexts, I learned that there are various persuasive objectives such as interpersonal influences, organizational influences, mass influences, etc. In terms of organizational influence, it could be influencing the employees to perform with more dedication and commitment. It would be possible by providing them with good working conditions, rewards, benefits so that they could feel valued for the organization, and perform to their potential.
As the topic centered on the marketing concept, I had considered the mass influence. To influence a larger group of people to buy the products and services of a particular brand, it would be important for me to manage the advertising and promotional activities properly. The right messages and information should be delivered to the customers to make sure that they could gain proper knowledge about the products and its attributes. This would not only influence their buying behaviors but could also make them gain a positive mindset about the mind, furthermore result in increased sales revenue and better profit level for the company.
To persuade or influence a large group of individuals, it would be necessary to use the right promotional strategies and ensure that the messages and information regarding the products and services are delivered to the customers so that they can know about those and understand whether their needs and preferences will be fulfilled or not. Mass media acts as a great influencer to enable changes in attitudes and behaviors among the individuals.
Elaboration Likelihood Model and Persuasion in Marketing
The media effects are those effects that can be measured resulting from the influence of mass media with the consideration of demographics and psychological characteristics of the individuals. I would like to use social media platforms to engage the customers as well as persuade their buying behavior by making them knowledgeable about the products and its attributes. After gaining media exposure, I believe that the customers will experience changes in cognition, their beliefs, and attitudes as well as bring out the behavioral effects.
By understanding the attitudes and behaviors, it should be linked with the judgments of the persuasive messages of the listener, which can help in determining how the behaviors could change. It is also important to shift the position of an individual to the arguments that are made, further judge a new position based on the level of acceptance. Therefore, these major aspects are to be managed to persuade the customers and make them buy the products and services of the company consistently.
As the topic is related to the marketing concept, so to influence a larger group of audience, a business organization needs to create a positive mindset among their minds. One example could be where Tesco maintained a strong and positive culture to establish better knowledge and information about the products and services to its customers. The sustainable approaches adopted by the company have been promoted to make people from the different market segments know about the environment friendly approaches undertaken, which has further created positive influences in their minds and drive their buying attitudes too. Tesco has created online website and used social media platforms to promote the products, which has created ease for the customers to buy the products. This has also influenced their buying behaviors and attitudes largely.
Another example of heuristics marketing can be the consideration of different persons who represent themselves in the different ways. A person wearing a lab coat can be termed as smart while a person at care home can be caring while a body builder is considered as strong. It is normal that our brains can make quick times and the heuristic abilities allow us to use the information that has been available readily. Thus, in order to persuade the visitors and assume something regarding the brand’s credibility, success and skills that can suit the needs as well as create scopes for success, messages and information are needed to be transmitted properly to the customers. It is an useful way of marketing that can allow heuristic people to make quick decisions as soon as they get prior assumptions through accessibility of the information obtained from the organization.
Commitment is related to the persuasion of individuals and when the people are more committed to a specific brand, their attitudes and behaviors will tend to remain positive as well while purchasing the product or service. Commitment means the company wants to gain the trust and loyalty of the customers by committing to their roles and responsibilities to satisfy the needs and preferences of the customers effectively. Selling by involving is the concept of commitment where the people are considered as part of the community and by fulfilling their needs and requirements, the purchase of products and services will also increase. When one individual will know about the brand and talk about it with other people, it will automatically influence other people to try the products and services of the company at least once. Persuading the customers is important for the marketers to make them influenced to make purchases of the products and services from the company (Chang, Yu & Lu, 2015).
To establish commitment, trust and loyalty are necessary and it can be possible when the company has offered value for money products to the company. The customers would also gain a positive attitude or behavior when they would be provided with necessary information and messages demonstrating the significance of the products and services offered, This is an effective way of marketing and it can create positive buying behaviors among the customers and influence them to buy those.
To respond to certain situation, I would like to form a customers’ services department where the staffs can immediately respond to the queries of the customers and provide them with relevant solutions. This would establish a good communication between the business and its customers as well as deliver the right messages and information to them, furthermore create positive mindsets among them and influence their purchasing decisions too. Therefore, this is how the mass influence is subjected to bring out desired positive outcomes, according to me.
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