Persuasive Advertising - J. Scott Armstrong [56]
Evidence on the effects of attribution
Grammar-school students in an “attribution group” were told that they were neat and tidy, and members of a “lecture group” that they should be neat and tidy; a “control group” was told nothing. Attribution was nearly twice as effective as the lecture in an immediate evaluation of tidiness. In a longer-term evaluation, the attribution group was even tidier than they had been on the immediate evaluation, while the lecture group was slightly less tidy than the control group. The authors speculated that the lecture method failed because it involved a negative attribution; it implied that the students were not tidy. Similar results were obtained in an experiment in four second-grade classrooms where some students were told that they had either the ability or the motivation to do well in math while others were not (Miller, Brickman, and Bolin 1975).
In a lab experiment, 318 subjects received ads requesting donations for the American Heart Association. Half received an ad that was designed for “helpful people” like themselves, Their intentions to donate were 2.8 percent higher than those not so labeled (Moore, Bearden, and Teal 1985, Table 1).
A review cited an additional five studies related to this principle and all provided support Furthermore, another field experiment involved mailing requests for Vermont Heart Fund donations to 1,450 residents of a small Vermont village. Positive and relevant label treatments said that they, “like other residents of their town were concerned about other people.” This led to a 3.6 percent increase in total donations over the control-group treatment, which received the same request but with no labeling (DeJong and Oopik 1992).
A review described evidence showing that people believe that general-purpose positive descriptions of personalities are tailored to them (Snyder 1978). Further support was provided by a small-scale experiment involving 41 subjects who used a computer game. When the computer provided flattery (e.g., “You seem to have an uncommon ability to structure data logically”), subjects had higher ratings for the interaction, the computer, and their own performance than when the computer did not give flattery. Insincere flattery (where subjects had been told beforehand that the flattery was not based on their performance) was about as effective as seemingly performance-based flattery (Fogg and Nass 1997).
2.5. Liking
Have you shopped for a car recently? You might have noticed that salespeople want you to like them. They might show you an album with pictures of their family as if to say, “Look, we are real people!” Then they confide that they like you and will try to get you a good deal from the nasty manager who will try to close the deal.
Tupperware, which makes plastic food-storage containers, has a “sales staff” consisting largely of women who host parties in their homes. The Tupperware concept is twofold: to sell the product and to recruit others to host such parties. People attend these parties because their friends, who serve as hostesses, invite them. They frequently purchase products because they want to maintain a good relationship with their friend, the hostess.
These strategies are designed to persuade purchasers to like the features associated with the product. A balance theory diagram can illustrate this. The lines represent relationships. A plus sign indicates a positive (liking) relationship; a minus sign indicates a negative