Persuasive Advertising - J. Scott Armstrong [60]
Assume that you are walking down a street and someone asks you to complete a short survey on what you think of the Heart Association. Whether you decide to complete the survey or refuse, the person asks you to make a donation to the Heart Association. Would the fact that you were asked to complete a survey make you more likely to donate?
2.7.2. Ask customers to take a relevant small step, then follow quickly with a directly related second request
One way to gain commitment is known as the “foot in the door” (FITD). It posits that people are more likely to commit to something if they have previously made a related smaller commitment, such as requesting information about a product. The initial step should be freely chosen. The FITD does not work when people are paid to comply with an initial request.
The greater the similarity between the initial request and the latter one, the more effective the FITD techniques (Freedman and Fraser 1966). For example, to enhance the likelihood of people volunteering to work at a hospital, they might first be asked to complete a questionnaire on ways that the hospital could provide better service. The hospital could then thank them for completing the questionnaire and request that they volunteer.
Advertisers have long used the FITD method for a variety of commercial products. In particular, when a product or service involves a large investment of a customer’s time or money, it would seem useful to gain that customer’s agreement to a small first step. An ad can ask for commitment, such as “call this toll-free number for information,” or “put your name on our mailing list.”
Evidence on the effects of the foot in the door
Now about that question posed about the Heart Association above. It is based on an experiment in which subjects who had been asked to complete the survey donated more money than those not asked about the survey (34 percent versus 19 percent) They also donated a little more per person; as a result, the total amount donated was more than twice as much as for people who had not been asked to respond to a survey (Reingen 1978).
One of the most influential papers on the FITD involved two experiments. In the first, as a prelude to asking whether a survey team of five or six men could come into the house to classify the household products that were being used, housewives were assigned to either a control group or one of three groups to receive one of the following phone calls:
• simply introducing the research project, with no request
• asking whether they would be willing to answer some questions
• asking eight easy questions about soaps they used.
Three days later, the researchers telephoned with another—and larger—request for a visit by the survey team. In the no-prior-contact control condition, 22 percent of the housewives agreed to allow the team to inspect the household goods. The introductory call helped slightly (28 percent agreement), agreeing to fill out the questionnaire helped a little more (33 percent), while the strongest effect came from answering the eight easy questions (53 percent). In their second experiment, the researchers randomly assigned 112 subjects to four experimental treatments and a no-contact control group. One treatment asked them to accept and display a three-inch square sign that said, “Be a safe driver,” a request to which all participants agreed. Two weeks later, all participants were asked to put a 6 ft by 3 ft sign in their front yards that said “Drive carefully.” Of the no-contact control group, 17 percent agreed to this billboard request. Of those asked to post the small window sign about safe driving (the relevant first step in this experiment), 76 percent agreed to the billboard request (Freedman and Fraser 1966).
In a field experiment, 88 heads of households in Toronto were asked to donate to the Cancer Society. The researchers asked one group to wear a plastic daffodil pin to publicize the drive,