PRIMING
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When exposure to one stimulus affects later reactions without awareness –
not the complete definition but all I need to know for this module.
MEE – Mere Exposure Effect
o Simple, fleeting repetitive exposure of a stimulus leads to someone
unconsciously liking it more.
o We tend to buy branded things because we feel safer with them –
familiarity means safety.
o Perceptual fluency – we like mirrored pictures of ourselves but we
prefer non-mirrored pictures of our peers because that is what we are
used to.
o Existing knowledge makes it easier to process – “warm glow of
familiarity”
How to create exposure:
o Posters
o Point of purchase displays
o Logos/Freebies
o Product placements
o TV/Films/Music (40% of songs in 2004 referenced at least one brand).
PLACES I CAN APPLY THIS: When talking about how someone could be influenced
to purchase a product after unconsciously seeing an advertisement about it earlier in
the week.
CONNECTIONS I SEE TO OTHER THEORIES: System 1 and 2
ENDORSEMENT
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types of endorsers – celebrities, experts and lay (ordinary) people.
theories of endorsement:
o Source credibility theory – acceptance of a message depends on the
qualities of the source. Expertness + trustworthiness = internalisation.
Expertness cues can be manipulated, e.g., actors playing doctors in TV
adverts. Trustworthiness is logical – not-for-profit organisations trusted
more – and peripheral – when someone uses eye contact, they are
trusted more.
o Source attractiveness theory – Acceptance of the message depends
on the attractiveness of the source.
o Meaning Transfer Theory – Endorser encodes a unique set of meanings that
are then transferred to the brand.
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Use which type when?
o SCT – When you have experts.
o SAT – When you have celebrities.
o MTT – When you have lay people.
None
Expert
Lay Person
Celeb
PLACES I CAN APPLY THIS: When talking about what method a business should
use to endorse their products.
CONNECTIONS I SEE TO OTHER THEORIES: Priming – we often feel like we
know celebrities and how they act, so using one as an endorsement could lead to
feelings of safety for the consumers.
NARRATIVES
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Stories! – Human universal – all cultures tell stories. All contain character(s), a
journey, and a conclusion.
Five things:
1. Draw our attention (escapism) – leads to brand awareness.
2. Transportation – Creates empathy for characters, descriptions are vivid
for imaginations, plot makes sense to us, the world ‘feels’ real
“verisimilitude”, familiar with how the world works, the more transported
we are the more we fall into the story’s frame and become easier to
persuade.
3. Absorb meanings – when transported we “suspend disbelief” and
accept the rules of the world, Aaker study suggests ELM rules no
longer apply and we do not counter argue. Beliefs “feels true” > “know
to be true”. Attitudes – who is good? Who is bad? Intentions – the more
transported we are the more likely we are to buy.
4. Stories are sticky – chunking helps to organise and digest info into
shapes in our LTM. Helps with brand awareness, brand associations
and perceived quality.
5. Evokes identification & deep emotions – for example, associating
cereal with childhood. Emotions lead to brand loyalty. Stories embed
emotions and mean that we absorb messages uncritically.
PLACES I CAN APPLY THIS: When thinking about creating an advertising campaign
using a narrative, make sure to include the five points.
CONNECTIONS I SEE TO OTHER THEORIES: Connected to memory as stories
help us to encode memories in our LTM.
MODELS OF BEHAVIOUR CHANGE (i.e., TPB)
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Changing minds is hard; political beliefs rarely change, even when giving
people new information. The brands and products that we buy are fairly stable
and we rarely change if we have been buying a certain product for a long
period of time.
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TPB is a behavioural theory that states that our behavioural intentions are
influenced by our attitudes towards the expected outcome of the behaviour
and the evaluation of the benefits and risks of that outcome.
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Attitude – positive/negative beliefs about things.
Norms – other people’s attitude and how much you care for them.
Perceived control – how much you can control attitudes and norms.
All three of the above become behavioural intentions.
Attitude strategies for beliefs:
 Alter associations – change beliefs, valence of beliefs, refocus on a different
belief etc
 Make them stronger – beliefs are stronger when based of a personal
experience/behaviour or when self-generated, also through creating and
repeating inferences.
Strategies for changing norms:
 In social spaces – an example is when smoking was banned from social
spaces, creating negative connotations around people who smoke publicly.
 On the internet – reviews and number of reviews change how people view a
product/restaurant etc., normative pressures on the internet are powerful,
omnipresent, and direct. Also, people have strong ties to things and others
that are personally relevant to themselves (homophily), along with opinions
that carry their biases.
Strategies for changing norms:
 Make it easy for people.
PLACES I CAN APPLY THIS: When talking about a consumer’s attitude towards a
product and the reason for that.
CONNECTIONS I SEE TO OTHER THEORIES: Linked to framing (see framing
page)
FRAMING
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Framing is grouping people’s thoughts about a thing into categories/frames.
You can’t change people’s minds on things that they consider important, but
you can change what bit of their mind they use when thinking about it. The
same person can have different thoughts about products at different times,
which can be grouped into categories. You can manipulate these frames, for
example tobacco packets have disturbing images on to dissuade people from
buying them.
Key terms
o Cognitive maps – the thoughts that someone can have about
something, contains cues.
o Cues – the internal or external events that have a signalling
significance to someone affecting their learning and behaviour.
o Salience – the feature(s)/cue(s) of a composition that grabs the most
attention of a person.
Branding cues – 2% milk is called skimmed, causing healthy cues to be
triggered, whereas 3.5% milk is called whole milk, causing cues to make the
consumer believe it is tastier and more complete to be triggered. Oil
companies also have green/natural logos to try and trigger environmentally
friendly cues.
PLACES I CAN APPLY THIS: When talking about how to persuade someone of the
health benefits of a product, for example.
CONNECTIONS I SEE TO OTHER THEORIES: Can be linked TBP because
through manipulating people’s frames you can change their temporary attitude of a
problem.
ARGUMENT (ELM)
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ELM stands for: Elaboration likelihood model. It was one of the first dualprocess models in persuasion. It states that when someone is strongly
motivated and has time to think over a decision, persuasion occurs through
the central route (weighing up reasons, logic and evidence and thinking over
the pros and cons of a choice). When someone is rushed or the decision is
less important, they tend to be persuaded by the peripheral route (matching
patterns for what a good argument looks like, for example being persuaded by
someone authoritative looking with lots of points).
o It is called ELM because it is the likelihood of someone to think over an
issue carefully, based on the level of elaboration they exhibit.
Central route is when someone carefully weighs up pros and cons using
critical thinking, it is not always correct however as it can be still influenced by
bias when processing information.
Peripheral route is when we can be persuaded to buy a product based on a
celebrity telling us to, for example. It helps with decision fatigue, as we do not
need to weigh up pros and cons of every single decision we make throughout
the day.
Do they persuade people the same – no they persuade people in different
ways depending how involved they feel with the decision.
PLACES I CAN APPLY THIS: When talking about a person’s reasons for buying a
particular product due to differing advertising strategies.
CONNECTIONS I SEE TO OTHER THEORIES: The heuristic-systematic model
(Chaiken) – also dual process model in persuasion. Systematic is close to central
route and heuristic route is close to peripheral route. Also can be linked to system 1
and 2 for obvious reasons.