Consumer Behavior: The Art of Persuasion
We all want others to see the world our way. That is the crux of attitude change. How we form our attitudes, and once formed how we modify them, is not random. When it comes to our own attitudes, we would vehemently deny that our attitudes are random, arbitrary, and flimsy. Rather, they are, we would claim, based on logic and thought. Why should it be any different when it comes to others’ attitudes? Indeed, everyone’s attitudes, about products and issues, are based on some systematic processes, at least most of them anyway. So, psychologists who have studied these processes have come up with some underlying theories, and understanding and following these theories is certain to give us more success in persuading others.
Yet, it would be presumptuous to believe that as a marketer you have the power to mastermind consumer attitudes. Consumers, most of the time, persuade themselves (remember the “active audience” theory); your job is simply to provide the right information the right way. Yes, sometimes, or even often, they absorb information passively. Sure, sometimes, they let the ad and commercial communication do its trick on their unguarded minds; but that too is their choosing—the issue is simply not important enough to them. It is they who choose, in life and in the marketplace, what messages they would soak-in unguarded and what they would accept and with what sort of message validity indicators (remember ‘source characteristics’?). Once again, if you read these parameters of the consumer mind correctly, then you would be able to fashion your message so that it agrees with their mode of persuading themselves.
Are you frustrated as marketers that sometimes it is just impossible to persuade consumers, knowledge of these theories notwithstanding? Why? Don’t the same theories explain why persuasion will NOT occur? And is it not just as well that marketers can’t mold consumer attitudes any way they like? Wouldn’t you as a consumer want to keep personal autonomy and allow marketers to guide your attitudes in a manner that serves, merely but amicably, your own modes and goals of self-persuasion? Why should it be any different when the roles are reversed—i.e., when you are the marketer and the target of your communications is the consumer? That way, both the fur merchant and PeTA have an equal opportunity to lure your mind, er, to serve your agenda of self-persuading yourself—you being the consumer (or marketer truly resonating with the consumer)!
From MYCBBook CHAPTER 8 LAST WORD
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MYCBBook—the World’s Second Most Interesting Book on Consumer Behavior