Stanford Business School Magazine

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The consumer as critic

Research by Peter Wright


FEW professors of marketing can claim to have begun their careers by selling encyclopedias. Peter Wright did just that. Straight out of high school, he sold $500 worth of books to his very first customer. Since then, Wright has gone on to more academic pursuits. But his early experiences left him with an abiding curiosity about the way people sell to other people. In a new paper, Wright proposes a conceptual framework that could improve our knowledge of how persuasion works, and why.

The paper, published this month in the Journal of Consumer Research , sets out what Wright and coauthor Marian Freistad of the University of Oregon call "everyday persuasion knowledge." Their premise is that today's consumers have a host of beliefs about "how advertisers and salespeople try to influence us," and that these personal beliefs come into play when consumers observe ads or sales presentations. What people believe about the sorts of tactics marketers seem to be using will influence how effective those tactics are in practice. "We know surprisingly little about people's intuitive insights about what advertisers or salespeople are up to, "Wright says. "Most studies of advertising and persuasion have ignored this. But we should give people more credit for being savvy about marketers' tactics."

In their paper, Wright and Freistad see advertising and selling as a "persuasion game," in which the agent (advertiser, salesperson, politician) matches wits with a member of the audience. In this game each player develops insights about the other's actions, goals, and tactics. Wright and Freistad speculate that consumers learn to recognize many tactics that are popular in advertising, such as the use of nostalgic music to evoke "mood memories," or in personal selling, such as a salesperson's attempts to get you to say favorable things about the product to evoke "creeping commitment." Wright and Freistad also detail various behaviors consumers use to control how ads affect them, from simply ignoring some tactics to discounting ads entirely when certain tactics are noted.

It's "much, much more difficult" to advertise products today than it was 20 years ago, Wright says. "People are more savvy and probably more cynical. They keep on learning more about advertising tactics from what their parents and friends say and what they read or hear in the media." Consumers represent "moving targets" whose understanding of marketing tactics changes over time. Tactics that worked for a marketer once won't work the same way later if people have developed "common sense" about them in the meantime.

The paper shows how some ads work by flouting the tried-and-true. In the Energizer bunny campaign, for example, a mechanical rabbit interrupts a fake commercial in order to demonstrate how long Energizer batteries last. The ad is a memorable and light-hearted spoof that works, Wright says.

"The premise is that an awful lot of advertising that uses traditional formats and traditional tactics is totally written off by consumers." The Energizer bunny ad "tweaks the tactics that consumers have come to expect from TV commercials."

Comparison advertising -- comparing your product explicitly to "the other guy" by name -- is an approach that doesn't work now the way it did years ago. In the 1970s, adult consumers began seeing comparative ads for the first time. At first, people didn't have much insight about the reasons why advertisers used them or when such ads seemed fair and when they seemed manipulative. But reactions to comparative ads today are more sophisticated.

"People have developed a clearer sense of when such ads seem sensible and well-done and when they seem offputting, offensive, or downright dumb," Wright says. "It's not that all such ads are automatic turnoffs -- people now judge your comparative ads on how you present the other guy. Everyday knowledge has become more contingent -- that's part of gaining expertise. Something that gets judged as 'vicious and insulting' in a political campaign, for example, may seem okay or even 'clever' in the context of, say, soft drink advertising.

"Marketers can shoot themselves in the foot if they don't give people adequate credit for what they know," says Wright. It's also important for the product itself to be worth buying.

"Getting people to simply like your ads won't sell a poorly designed product, " he notes. "It's very important, however, that people like and respect your style of advertising and selling when what you're selling is a service, because consumers feel they gain insight about what you're like to interact with from seeing how you try to influence them. Your selling or advertising tactics signal whether you'll treat them with respect and empathy or act like a jerk in face-to face encounters."

Wright and Freistad hope that their "persuasion knowledge model" will lead scholars and marketers to deeper understanding of when and why influence tactics succeed or fail. Their talks with executives at major companies and ad agencies indicate that advertising pros realize how little they know about what consumers know about advertising -- and they are hungry to learn more. Further, Wright notes that the everyday knowledge of advertising and sales professionals also should be studied more directly.

"We can't tell how savvy consumers are about how marketers think unless we understand how marketers really do think," Wright concludes.

Beatrice Motamedi

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