In the article The persuasion knowledge model: How people cope with persuasion by Friestad & Wright which was published in The Journal of Consumer Research in 1994, the main emphasis is put upon the role of the individual’s persuasion knowledge in coping with the persuasion attempts.
This article provides a valuable insight into the problem which has been ignored by the scholars previously, namely the tactics used by the consumers for evaluating the advertising information and creating certain attitudes to the products and marketers. The authors of the article present the Persuasion Knowledge Model (PKM) for establishing the links between personal persuasion awareness and responses to persuasion attempts. Recognizing the fact that persuasion knowledge is not a static parameter and is constantly changing, the researchers take into account various influential factors which can have an impact upon the construction of the consumers’ persuasion knowledge, including their cultural background, educational level, personal qualities. Treating marketers as agents and consumers as objects, the scholars did not limit their research domain to consumer behavior only but rather extended it to a broad psychological perspective. “The PKM also implies that targets, may interpret some feature of a persuasion attempt as an intentional tactic and respond to it accordingly, even though the agent (marketer or researcher) had not envisioned it as such” (Friestad & Wright 1994, p. 25).
The article under consideration is valuable because the described model provides opportunities for not only further theoretical research but also practical implications of the findings in daily practice for motivating consumers to enhance their persuasion awareness and create proper attitudes for distinguishing between intentional persuasion attempts and occasional influences.
Meyers-Levy & Malaviya discussed the mechanisms which can be used by the consumers for mediating persuasion in their article Consumers’ processing persuasive advertisements: An integrative framework of persuasion theories which was published in the Journal of Marketing in 1999.
Consolidating the existing theoretical materials from the prior studies, the researcher constructed an integrative framework of studies, linking the choice of the strategy to the corresponding cognitive level employed by the consumer in every individual case. The researchers concluded that the process of judgment formation and the strategy used for retrieving and processing information are interdependent. Thus, the accessibility of advertising information is crucial for being perceived as relevant and diagnostic. On the other hand, the chosen processing strategy can affect the choice of criteria for assessing the diagnosticity parameter. The researchers determined the three strategies of information processing, including the systematic, heuristic and experiential strategies. Implementing a systematic strategy, recipients are interested in forming accurate views and not only have opportunities for processing the information in a proper way, but use these opportunities. Recipients deciding on heuristic strategy are either reluctant or unable to process the information and can form judgments that are reasonable but may be not the most accurate one. The experiential strategy is used by recipients when they perceive the message as not important and decide not to use the cognitive resources for processing it, relying on their prior experience. The most significant contribution made by Meyers-Levy & Malaviya (1999) was their identification of the judgment correction stage in the course of information processing during which recipients can reappraise and change their initial judgments.
Pointing out at the correction stage, the scholars recognize the dynamics of the information processing strategies.
The main claim of Duncan & Moriarty, the authors of the article A communication-based marketing model for managing relationships which was published in Journal of Marketing in 1998 is that understanding of the role of communication is crucial for establishing and preserving the profitable relationships with stakeholders.
Exploring the 4Ps marketing model which comprises product, price, place and promotion elements, the scholars gave special consideration to the 4th P for investigating the communication mix involved into the evaluation of the promotional materials. The main argument for giving preference to communication instead of persuasion perspectives provided by the researchers is the negative responses to persuasion attempts from the recipients and the short-term character of the established rapport if any. It is significant that Duncan & Moriarty (1998) do not overestimate the importance of communication and point out at the possible hazards of communication fallacy, according to which communication is central to all human activities. Pointing out at the main drawbacks of traditional communication model, the scholars offer an integrative marketing model which is based on the links between communication and persuasion. A complex approach to viewing the processes taking place at various dimensions of the model and emphasizing the intersection between the communication and marketing theories are the main advantages of this study.
The article under consideration provides a valuable insight into the research problem because it not only explains the importance of communication for establishing positive stakeholder relationships, but also sheds light upon the possible marketing implications of this theoretical assumption.
Vakratsas & Ambler (1999) devoted their article How advertising works: What do we really know to the impact of various advertizing strategies upon the consumers’ perception of the promotional materials and their corresponding responses to the brand messages.
Exploring the intermediate and behavioral effects of advertizing messages upon the recipients’ beliefs and behavioral patterns, the researchers offer an integral model for investigating the advertizing effects in their contextual environment. The solution to comprise the affect, cognition and experience as the three main parameters central to the analysis of the advertizing effects was a rather original idea and can be regarded as a valuable contribution to the existing theoretical studies. Moreover, reviewing more than 250 sources related to the research question before proceeding to their own investigation, the scholars managed to identify the gaps in the existing studies and conduct their own research for filing them. For example, serious consideration of the context, namely, the competition in the market sector, the target market and the company’s goal diversity is valuable for recognizing the complexity of the advertizing processes and their impact upon the consumers’ perceptions, beliefs, brand awareness and choices. Presenting their framework schematically, the scholars managed to make it simple without underestimating the complexity of the discussed processes at the same time. After discussing various types of advertizing effects, the researchers combined them into an integral model for exploring the links between different dimensions.
In general, it can be stated that the article under consideration classifies the information on the types of advertizing effects retrieved from the prior studies and offers an integrative non-hierarchic model for discussing the positive and negative sides of specific advertizing strategies by evaluating their potential effectiveness in various contexts, defined by the market and company’s peculiarities.
Reference List
Duncan, T. & Moriarty, S. (1998). A communication-based marketing model for managing relationships. Journal of Marketing, 62: 1-13.
Friestad, M. & Wright, P. (1994). The persuasion knowledge model: How people cope with persuasion. The Journal of Consumer Research, 21(1): 1-31.
Meyers-Levy, J. & Malaviya, P. (1999). Consumers’ processing persuasive advertisements: An integrative framework of persuasion theories. Journal of Marketing, 63: 45-60.
Vakratsas, D. & Ambler, T. (1999). How advertising works: What do we really know? Journal of Marketing, 63: 26-43.