Ch.1: Setting the stage
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In this introductory chapter, the stage has been set for the chapters that follow. The subject of the
present book, advertising, is conceptualized as any form of paid communication by an identified
sponsor aimed to inform and/or persuade target audiences about an organization, product, service
or idea.
A glance through history revealed that the origins of modern-day advertising date back to classical
civilizations such as Egypt, Mesopotamia, Greece and Rome. The Industrial Revolution accelerated
advertising practice as a result of the massive increase in production scale and the large-scale
diffusion of the division of labour, which increasingly necessitated informing consumers of the
availability of goods and services. This development also led to the proliferation of brands to identify
and label products and services. Print and audio-visual media such as magazines, newspapers,
television, radio and the Internet are the key carriers of advertising messages and these media
appear to be complementary to each other rather than substitutes.
Advertising serves a variety of societal and individual functions. Societal functions include facilitating
competition among firms, funding mass media, serving as a key employer to thousands of
professionals worldwide. Individual functions of advertising are twofold: to inform and persuade
consumers.
The psychological approach to the impact of advertising was discussed, which aims at identifying
effects of advertising at the individual level. The objective is to relate specific advertising stimuli to
specific and individual consumer responses. Consumer responses include thinking, feeling and doing
responses or cogni- tive, affective, conative and behavioural responses. The types of effects of advertising stimuli on these responses include main, mediated and interaction effects. Advertising stimuli
include: source variables, such as credibility and attractive- ness; content variables, such as argument
quality, message structure and sided- ness; and types of appeal, such as argument-based or affectbased appeals. While we should not overestimate the psychological effects of advertising, there is
some indication that advertising exposure can cultivate product desires and may boost materialism,
at least among children.
Advertising is one type of communication that makes up the promotional mix in (integrated)
marketing communications. Other promotional elements include direct marketing, sales promotion,
PR and personal selling.
There are two basic approaches to the conceptualization of the effects of adver- tising: the modelling
approach and the behavioural approach. The modelling approach focuses on the aggregate level and
aims to plot advertising inputs (e.g. expenditures) to outputs (e.g. sales). Sales-response models are
an example of this approach. The behavioural approach focuses on individual responses to specific
advertising stimuli. Classic work on the behavioural approach includes hierarchy- of-effects models.
These models assume that consumer responses to advertising proceed through a fixed set of learning
stages involving a cognitive, affective and behavioural stage. Additional models such as the FCB grid
and the Rossiter– Percy grid subsequently stressed the role of consumer involvement. These
developments are mirrored by research on persuasion, which saw an increased focus on information
processing resulting in the cognitive response approach, and ultimately the dual process models and
their extensions. Even more recently, these models have been supplemented by work examining
unconscious and auto- matic processes involved in consumer behaviour. Some of the work in the
field has come under scrutiny following the replication crisis in psychology. We briefly discussed the
antecedents, manifestations and consequences of the replication crisis and what they imply for the
insights in this book.
Ch.2: How consumers acquire and process information from advertising
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This chapter has reviewed evidence from social cognition and consumer psych- ology on processes
that play a role when consumers acquire and process informa- tion from advertising. In line with
other chapters in this volume, these processes can be either unconscious, low effort and automatic,
or deliberative, conscious and effortful. There are four stages involved in the process of information
acqui- sition and processing.
Stage 1 is termed preattentive analysis, which involves a general, non-goal- directed ‘surveillance’ of
the environment. In this stage consumers do not inten- tionally tune in to advertising but get
influenced by ad messages nevertheless. Preattentive processing uses both feature analysis and
conceptual analysis. The impact of the effects of preattentive processing is mostly based on implicit
memory.
Incidental exposure can direct and capture attention processes in this stage, based on the notion of
matching activation, or differential lateral hemispheric activation. The research on matching
activation suggests that advertisers need to place great emphasis on the decision where to schedule
their message, since attention can be directed to or away from the focal ad depending on whether the
focal ad can make use of the mobilized attentional resources that are left unused when processing
competing ads.
An important mechanism that can account for many phenomena occurring during the preattentive
stage is hedonic fluency, or the misattribution of pro- cessing-induced affect to the brand that is
featured in an advertisement. Various types of fluency have been identified in the literature including
processing flu- ency, conceptual fluency and goal fluency.
Stage 2 is coined the stage of focal attention: after noticing a stimulus, it may be brought into
conscious awareness where it is identified and categorized. Focal attention can be drawn toward
advertising messages involuntarily through stimulus salience, vividness and novelty.
Salience is the extent to which stimulus features contrast with the environment. Hence, salience is
context dependent. The use of humour and an upward camera angle have been examined as
instances of salience.
Vividness is not fully context dependent but can also be ‘person dependent’. Vivid information in
advertising is information that is emotionally interesting, con- crete and image-provoking and
proximate in a sensory temporal or spatial way. Vividness effects have been examined by focusing on
personality traits (i.e. the tendency to engage in visual imagery), modality factors and consumer
goals.
A third way in which focal attention can be drawn is through the use of novel information. A key
factor driving a consumer perception of novelty is the extent to which information in advertising
disconfirms existing consumer expectancies. Sustaining novelty can amount to advertising repetition
strategies where cos- metic and substantive changes are incorporated to attract and hold consumer
attention.
An integral part of the focal attention phase in the information processing sequence is categorizing
information once it has been brought into conscious awareness and identified. In the advertising and
consumer domain, categoriza- tion processes are reflected in studies on product and brand line
extensions. Categorizations are frequently based on comparisons between product attributes (i.e.
products with different brands that share certain attributes, such as the product category of cars),
brands (products with different attributes that share the same brand, such as the examples above) or
product usage (products with different brands and different attributes that are used in similar
situations, such as breakfast foods).
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A powerful force driving categorization is the extent of similarity between the parent category (e.g. a
parent brand) and the potential category member (e.g. a brand extension), which is reflected in the
representativeness heuristic.
Another categorization phenomenon is the pioneering advantage or the stra- tegic benefit that a
newcomer may have in the eyes of the consumer. Pioneering brands may start their own categories
and may harvest an inherent advantage, an attribute advantage and a comparison advantage, vis-à vis competitors.
Assimilation and contrast are additional manifestations of consumer categoriza- tion processes.
Assimilation entails the notion that objects are classified as more similar to the parent category to the
extent that the object and category are more congruent and contrast implies a reverse phenomenon.
Impression formation is a specific type of categorization that occurs when not just products or brands
are categorized, but product or brand users as a function of associations related to a parent brand
category.
Stage 3 is termed comprehension, the process of forming inferences pertaining to the semantic
meaning of the stimulus. Work on the truth effect shows that com- prehension is an effortful process
with people tending to initially believe what they see, and only on second thought correct their initial
judgement, if at all. Advertisers can use this bias by simply repeating their claims, since repetition has
been shown to increase familiarity, which increases believability.
The fourth and final stage is elaborative reasoning or the process by which the semantically
represented stimulus is actively related to previously stored con- sumer knowledge that allows for
simple or more complex inferences. Elaboration pertains to consumer thinking and this thinking can
vary along at least three dimensions: the extent of thinking, the valence of thinking and the object of
thinking. Two examples of the latter include the roles of self-schemata and meta- cognition in
elaborative reasoning.
The present chapter dealt with what consumers think when intentionally and incidentally exposed to
advertising messages. In order to think what they think, however, consumers need to draw on a vast
and flexible reservoir, which we have not described in this chapter, but will turn our attention to
next: consumer memory.
Ch.4. : How consumers form attitudes towards products
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The first section of the chapter reviewed the controversy surrounding the def- inition of the attitude
concept. Researchers agree that attitudes are evaluative responses and directed towards some
attitude object. But there is disagreement as to whether to define it as a predisposition to evaluate or
as the evaluative response itself. Although the dispositional definition seems very plausible, the fact
that some attitudes are constructed on the spot and that people’s explicit attitudes sometimes differ
from their implicit attitudes speaks against this def- inition. In this volume, we therefore opted for
the definition of attitudes as ‘the categorization of a stimulus object along an evaluative dimension’
(Zanna & Rempel, 1988).
Since some attitudes exert a powerful impact on our thinking and behaviour, whereas others have
little or no effect, the second section of this chapter focused on determinants of attitude strength.
Some of the determinants of attitude strength (e.g. attitude importance) are related to attitude
function, others (e.g. ambivalence, evaluative–cognitive consistency) are related to attitude structure.
The concept of attitude strength therefore links aspects of attitude structure and function. Attitude
strength determines whether an attitude is relatively stable or highly context dependent.
Understanding the determinants of attitude strength therefore helps us to understand why attitudes
vary in the extent to which they are resistant to change and predictive of behaviour.
The third section of the chapter discussed processes of attitude formation. Attitudes derive from
cognitive, evaluative/emotional and behavioural infor- mation and we discussed the various
processes through which these different classes of information influence attitude formation.
Research on the formation of cognitively based evaluative responses has focused mainly on the
question of whether attitudes that are based on a person’s direct experience with the atti- tude object
are better predictors of behaviour than attitudes that derive from indirect experience (e.g. verbal
descriptions, pictorial material). We concluded that experience-based attitudes are better predictors
of behaviour, but only if the situation in which the attitude is formed is similar to that in which
behaviour is assessed.
Our discussion of the formation of attitudes based on affective or emotional experiences focused on
three processes: mere exposure, classical or evaluative conditioning and the affect-as-information
hypothesis. With mere exposure effects, liking for initially neutral stimuli increases with frequency of
exposure. The more often individuals are exposed to a stimulus, the more they like it. The mere
exposure effect is strongest at first exposure and levels off after 10 to 20 exposures. Furthermore, it
is not necessary that individuals are consciously aware of the fact that a stimulus has been presented.
In fact, the mere exposure effect was stronger when stimuli were presented subliminally rather than
supraliminally.
In classical or evaluative conditioning, initially neutral stimuli are presented together with stimuli
that are positively or negatively evaluated. After repeated association some of the valence of the
evaluatively polarized stimulus transfers to the neutral stimulus. It is becoming generally accepted
that evaluative con- ditioning is no unitary concept but can result from several different processes.
We discussed three different mechanisms through which evaluative conditioning effects can occur.
Finally, the affect-as-information hypothesis suggests a more cognitive route through which an
evaluatively polarized stimulus context can affect attitudes towards a neutral stimulus. Thus, rather
than being automatically linked to the neutral stimulus through association, pleasant store music or
other pleasant con- textual factors might influence the evaluation of a product through the ‘how do I
feel about it’ heuristic. Individuals might misattribute the pleasant mood caused by the context to the
product and as a result evaluate the product more positively.
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In our discussion of attitude formation based on behavioural information we considered two
mechanisms, namely that people infer their attitudes towards an object from their past behaviour
(self-perception theory) and that their atti- tude is influenced by the consequences of their past
behaviour (instrumental conditioning). In support of Bem’s (1972) self-perception theory, perceived
past behaviour affected attitudinal judgements only when attitudes were weak, but not when they
were strong.
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The fourth section of this chapter focused on attitude structure and the function of attitudes. Attitude
structure reflects the way in which the different types of information are integrated into an overall
evaluation. We discussed two issues, namely the relationship between attitudes and beliefs and the
dual mediation hypothesis of advertisements. It is important to understand how beliefs about an
attitude object are integrated into an overall evaluation because persuasive communications, which
are the most important strategy of attitude change, typ- ically aim at changing the individual’s beliefs
about an attitude object. According to the dual mediation hypothesis, advertisements can influence
attitudes towards brands not only through changing the individual’s beliefs about the attributes of a
particular brand but also by eliciting positive effects that ‘rub off’ on the product through evaluative
conditioning.
In our discussion of the function of attitudes, we argued that attitudes help us to adapt to our physical
and social environment by indicating which stimuli one should approach and which one should
avoid. Understanding attitude functions is important for strategies of attitude change because one
must know why some- body holds an attitude in order to be able to change it.
Before we moved to a discussion of the consumer goals that products satisfy, we discussed the
relationship between attitudes, goals and intentions. We introduced the difference between liking
and wanting. Having a positive attitude towards some attitude object reflects liking of an object or
finding a future state desirable, but not necessarily wanting to own the object or to attain that state.
We defined goals as cognitive representations of desired future states one intends to attain through
action. To form the goal to purchase an object, the object does not only have to be desirable (or
substantially more desirable than alternatives), it also has to be attain- able. However, for people to
take action in pursuit of a goal, the goal has also to be activated (e.g. by some cue to action) and it has
to be sufficiently dominant not to be overridden by conflicting goals. Once such a goal is activated,
the person has formed the intention to pursue this goal. However, since there are typically multiple
means to reach a goal, a person can only be said to have formed a behavioural intention, once he/she
has chosen a particular behaviour to pursue that goal.
In our discussion of the consumer goals that products satisfy (i.e. the functions they serve for the
consumer), we distinguished between utilitarian, self-expression, identity-building and hedonic
goals. Utilitarian products such as razors or head- ache tablets are bought merely for utilitarian
reasons and are evaluated in terms of their effectiveness in satisfying these utilitarian goals. In
contrast, goods that serve mainly hedonic goals such as wine, paintings or jewellery are purchased
for their taste, design or the aesthetic pleasure they provide. Most goods have a sig- nificance that
goes beyond utilitarian and hedonic goals. They convey meaning by which individuals communicate
something about themselves. Thus, goods often also serve identity-related goals. They help
individuals to express their identity and often even contribute to building and maintaining this
identity. For example, watches can serve merely as timepieces, but they can also be used as display of
wealth in an attempt to gain status with one’s social environment. It appears that the personality
dimension of self-monitoring is an important individual diffe- rence variable that differentiates
individuals who attach greater value to image from those who focus more on the utilitarian aspects of
a product.
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Ch5: How consumers yield to advertising: Principles of persuasion and attitude change
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Based on the conceptualization of advertising as one form of persuasion, this chapter reviewed social
psychological theories of persuasion as well as research that applied these theories to advertising.
The theoretical development in the area of persuasion can be categorized into four stages.
Stage 1 is represented by theories that assume that persuasion involved the learning of persuasive
arguments contained in a communication (e.g. Yale reinforcement theory, McGuire’s information
processing model). Despite some valuable insights, these approaches were finally disproved by the
consistent failure to find recall of message arguments related to extent of persuasion.
Stage 2 is represented by the cognitive response model, which replaced the passive learner of
arguments with an active respondent who engages in a silent discus- sion with the communicator
and responds to arguments contained in the commu- nication either with supportive arguments or
with counterclaims. This model also contained the motivational assumption that the extent to which
recipients are willing to think about a message and to engage in this silent dialogue will depend on
their involvement with, or personal relevance of, the issue presented in the communication. This
theory was finally integrated into dual process theories of persuasion.
Stage 3 is represented by dual process theories of persuasion, which abandon the assumption that the
acceptance of message arguments will always have to be based on a systematic processing of these
arguments. These theories acknow- ledge that recipients may sometimes take short cuts and accept
or reject the position recommended by the communicator without thinking about message
arguments. Dual process theories further specify the factors that determine the intensity of message
processing and thus the conditions under which attitude change will be mediated by messagerelevant thinking. There is a great deal of empirical evidence that supports the assumption that
recipients who are able and motivated to process a communication base their decision to accept or
reject the position advocated by a communication on careful scrutiny of message arguments,
whereas communicators who are unable or unmotivated to system- atically process a message tend
to rely on heuristic cues (e.g. communicator credibility, country-of-origin information). In addition to
processing motivation, self-validation – that is the processes that determine whether message
recipients have confidence in the validity of their message-relevant thoughts – can influence attitude
change.
Stage 4 is represented by the unimodel, which abandons the dual process assumption of a necessary
link between extent of processing motivation/ability and type of cue used. Whereas heuristic cues
are typically easier to process and often less valid than message arguments, this is not necessarily
always the case. There are weak message arguments and strong heuristic cues. Furthermore, as
already recognized by dual process theorists (e.g. Bohner et al., 1995; Chaiken et al., 1989; Chaiken &
Maheswaran, 1994), even highly motivated recipients rely on heuristic cues if the arguments
contained in a communication do not allow them to arrive at a clear-cut decision about the validity of
the position advocated by a communicator. The strength of the unimodel is that it can account for all
the findings accumulated in research guided by dual process theories. The weakness of the unimodel
is that it produced only few empirical predictions, which cannot be explained in terms of the dual
process logic. Thus, the importance of the unimodel lies more in the theoretical clarity it provided
than in its power to open (and integrate) whole new realms of empirical research.
The second part of this chapter discussed strategies advertisers use to deal with two of the major
shortcomings of advertising, namely that consumers try to avoid exposure to advertisements and that
knowledge of the persuasive intent of advertisements triggers resistance to persuasion.
To attract the attention of consumers, advertisers often use humorous advertisements. Although this
strategy is effective in attracting attention, it has the disadvantage that consumers often remember
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the humour but not the advertised brand or product. However, through their influence on implicit
attitudes, humour might influence purchasing decisions that are made with little deliberation and
thought investment.
The use of sexual imagery is another attention-attracting strategy that is often used by advertisers.
However, the effects of sex in advertising are complex and moderated by several factors, most
importantly the relevance of the sexual imagery to the product and the gender of the target audience.
Sexual imagery draws attention to an advertisement, but might impair memory for the brand name,
especially when the imagery is irrelevant for the product being advertised. Research also suggests
that sexual appeals can have a negative effect on brand attitudes, even for men. There is also no
evidence that sexual appeals influence purchasing behaviour.
Since the resistance of consumers to advertisements is triggered by their percep- tion of the intent to
persuade, advertisers have developed several strategies aimed at clouding this perception, namely
the use of two-sided communications, product placement, native advertisements and sponsoring.
Two-sided communications try to appear unbiased by admitting some minor deficiencies of the
advertised products. Although this strategy increases recipients’ trust in the positive product claims
made in an advertisement, there is little evidence that it results in more posi- tive brand attitudes.
Product placement is disguised advertising in which movie or television characters use a particular
product (or appear to have the product in their household or at their workplace). If used wisely,
product placement can improve viewers’ brand attitude and purchasing intention. Native advertising
is the display advertisement’s equivalent to product placement. Whereas in product placement a
product is embedded in the content of a film (or a story), in native advertising a display
advertisement is embedded in the editorial content of a web page. Finally, sponsoring tries to
improve brand attitudes by linking the brand (or more precisely the producer of the brand) to some
positively valued event or tele- vision programme.
The last two chapters contained many references to purchasing intention and purchasing behaviour,
without systematically discussing the theoretical rela- tionship between brand attitudes, purchasing
intention and purchasing behav- iour. This theoretical relationship will be the topic of Chapter 6,
where we will not only demonstrate that attitudes towards a given behaviour are the most important
determinant of this behaviour, we will also discuss the relationship between explicit and implicit
attitudes and suggest that each of these attitudes is predictive of different types of behaviour.
Ch6.: How advertising influences buying behaviour
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Once upon a time, social psychologists expected attitudes towards any attitude object to influence the
whole range of individual behaviour that could be enacted towards that object and were upset by
evidence that disproved this assumption. We now know that the correct question to ask is not
whether but when attitudes influence behaviour.
The most important condition for measures of attitude to predict behaviour is that the two types of
measures are compatible. Compatibility can be achieved by aggregating measures of behaviour to the
level of generality of the attitude measure or by making the attitude measure so specific as to apply
to the specific behaviour we want to predict.
According to the TPB (which is an extension of the theory of reasoned action), a person’s intention to
perform a specific behaviour is the best predictor of that behaviour. People’s intentions to engage in a
specific behaviour are a function of their attitude towards that behaviour, their subjective norms
(normative beliefs × motivation to comply) and their perceived behavioural control over performing
that behaviour.
The TRGP integrates goal theory with the reasoned action/planned behaviour theories. According to
the TRGP, the impact of attitudes and subjective norms on motivation to engage in a specific
behaviour depends on active procurement and active approval goals. For example, chronic dieters
will only be successful in restraining their food consumption as long as their dieting goal is dominant.
If – when exposed to tasty food stimuli – their eating enjoyment goal becomes dominant (i.e. becomes
the active procurement goal), their motivation to diet will be weakened.
The theories of reasoned action, planned behaviour and reasoned goal pursuit assume that the
influence of attitudes on behaviour is mediated by intentions. However, even though intentions are
the best single predictor of behaviour, they predict less than 30 per cent of the variance in behaviour.
This intention–behaviour gap can be reduced if we motivate people to form implementation
intentions. Implementation intentions differ from general intentions, because they specify the
situation and time when the intended action should be performed.
One reason why implementation intentions work is that by mentally simulating that if situation X
arises one will enact behaviour Y, one partially or fully transfers the control over the instigation of
the behaviour Y to environmental cues. Thus, once we have formed an implementation intention to
do Y in situation X, situation X will trigger the behavioural response Y. With easy and well-learnt
responses, this can lead to the automatic performance of that behaviour.
The second part of the chapter discussed the influence of automatic processes on behaviour. There is
increasing evidence that attitudes, social norms, habits and goals can be primed by one’s social or
physical environment and influence behav- iour without individuals being aware of being influenced.
Behaviour can be automatically and unconsciously influenced by our implicit attitudes, an effect that
becomes apparent when implicit and explicit attitudes are discrepant. Under these conditions,
explicit attitudes predict behaviour that is under the individual’s control, whereas implicit attitudes
are better predictors of behaviour when the individual lacks the resource (and motivation) to exert
control.
Norms can be triggered by environmental factors and influence behaviour without the individual
being aware of this effect. For example, a picture of a library can induce individuals to lower their
voices, but only if the norm is goal relevant (i.e. if they are planning to go to the library).
There is increasing evidence that goals can be primed and that individuals often adopt goals without
being aware of the environmental stimuli that acted as the prime (e.g. the smell of cleaning liquid can
make people aware that their house needs cleaning).
Ch7: Beyond persuasion: Achieving consumer compliance without changing attitudes
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This chapter has reviewed principles of social influence designed to produce con- sumer compliance
with (sales) requests. Several forms of advertising, most not- ably direct-response advertising,
explicitly seek an overt behavioural response from consumers and in the process employ one or
more of the principles outlined in this chapter.
Social psychological research has identified a series of six heuristic influence principles that
compliance professionals such as advertisers and marketers can employ to get consumers to say ‘yes’
to their offer. Heuristics are simple decision rules that consumers may use as a rule of thumb in a
given influence setting. These heuristics are the principles of reciprocity, commitment/consistency,
social val- idation, liking, authority and scarcity. In addition, research has also identified the role of
the confusion principle in consumer compliance and has stressed the role of consumer selfregulation in compliance settings.
The first section discussed the role of consumer mindlessness. We also related mindlessness to
automaticity and argued that the fact that most of the influence processes discussed in this chapter
operate through processes that are subtle, implicit and frequently outside conscious awareness of
the consumer does not necessarily mean that they are also automatic. Mindlessness drives the
impact of the various influence heuristics on compliance. Heuristic decision-making is considered the
default and frequently the most efficient way of behaving in many influence settings.
The next section addressed the reciprocity principle or the motivation to return a favour. The DITF
influence technique hinges on the reciprocity heuristic and is composed of a rejection-thenmoderation sequence where the target consumer is first approached with a large offer or request,
which is almost certain to be rejected, only to be followed by a more moderate target request. The
target request is presented as a concession with the reciprocity rule provoking a counter conces- sion
on the part of the target consumer: compliance. The reciprocity principle also accounts for the impact
of the TNA technique, whereby an initial request is followed by a second request that is made more
desirable. Sales promotion efforts such as handing out product samples also induce consumer
reciprocity concerns, which partly account for their effectiveness.
Commitment/consistency is a heuristic principle that relies on the need to behave congruently across
situations. The FITD technique, and a subtype, the CQP, both use the consistency principle to produce
compliance. In an FITD setting, the target request is preceded by a smaller initial request or series of
requests. Scholars have pointed to a self-perception process to account for the effective- ness of the
technique. Hence, from their compliance with the initial, small request, consumers infer that they
must have a positive attitude towards compliance with such requests. This increases compliance
with the bigger target request. The FITD and CQP procedures have been found to increase
compliance across various com- pliance settings and types of requests. An additional technique that
employs the commitment/consistency principle is the lowball technique where the deal or offer
changes to a less attractive alternative after initial commitment.
A third influence principle is the heuristic of social proof or social validation. It involves the tendency
to look at other people to infer the ‘correct’ way of behaving in a given situation. The principle of
social proof is mainly used in situations of ambiguity and uncertainly where other, more objective
sources of information are unavailable or inaccessible. Social validation is used frequently in advertising in messages using reference group appeals. Personality traits such as self- monitoring and
individualism versus collectivism have been found to moderate the impact of reference group
appeals and social proof in advertising and other influence settings.
Another powerful influence heuristic is the liking principle. Consumers tend to comply with requests
from sales representatives they like and research has identified several factors that affect liking.
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First, familiarity has been found to increase liking. Moreover, liking is induced by physical
attractiveness. Similarity also facilitates liking as does ingratiation or ‘brown-nosing’. Finally, liking is
stimulated by bringing good news. Liking-based ad formats include the testimo- nial and the slice of
life.
Authority is the power to influence others into believing, preferring or behaving in a certain manner
either by coercion or with the aid of status and position-related symbols. Authority is a function of
status and hence is communicated through symbols such as clothing items and products. These
symbols of authority are fre- quently portrayed in advertising. Research shows that symbols of
authority actu- ally succeed in bringing about hierarchization behaviour. In addition, in the most
famous research on authority, Milgram (1963) showed the ease with which naı̈ve participants can be
brought to inflict serious harm on others simply by obeying an authority figure.
The heuristic principle of scarcity involves the tendency to infer value from limited availability rather
than to infer availability from value. Scarcity is proposed as the basis of all economic thought. It
manifests itself in product bans, dwindling supplies, limited availability, special editions or time
restrictions. Research shows that scarcity increases product ratings due to enhanced desirability.
Although scarcity may function as a heuristic, there is also research suggesting that it may prompt
more extensive processing. Scarcity may be viewed as a loss of freedom to choose and hence triggers
psychological reactance, or the tendency to actively restore what has been lost.
In addition to these six heuristics, research has identified the confusion prin- ciple, or the notion that
gently confusing a consumer can increase the tendency to comply with a sales request. This research
has centred on the DTR technique, which is characterized by a small ‘twist’, or odd element, in sales
script, the ‘dis- ruption’, followed by a persuasive phrase that concludes the script, the ‘reframe’.
Research has shown that the DTR technique results in higher compliance rates than conventional
sales scripts. The technique works because the disruption distracts the consumer from
counterarguing the message, and the reframe acts as a peripheral cue thus increasing persuasion. In
addition, the disruption may increase the need for cognitive closure that the reframe subsequently
provides.
Finally, the limited-resource account provides an explanation for the mind- lessness encountered in
many influence settings, involving the notion of self- regulation failure brought about by resource
depletion. The basic assumption is that actively responding to influence attempts requires selfregulation and consumes a limited resource available for such processes. The resulting state of selfregulatory resource depletion increases vulnerability to influence attempts through increased
reliance on compliance-promoting heuristics. This research has shown that sequential request
techniques such as the FITD or DITF tech- nique work in two stages. In the first stage, the initial
request or series of requests is presented to the consumer. Yielding to the initial request(s) results in
self-regulatory resource depletion. This weakened state of low self-regulatory resources produces
the mindlessness typically observed in studies on social influence. Once mindless, people are less
able to defend themselves to unwanted influence attempts. Hence in the second stage, self-regulatory
resource depletion fosters compliance but mainly when the influence setting harbours a powerful
influence heuristic.