Differentiate Virtual Social Media Influencers

A social media influencer is often a real human with a known personality, but also could be created using computer graphics software and then presented to the marketplace with a storyline complex enough to portray a memorable personality. That’s a virtual influencer. Researchers at University of Zaragoza compared the effectiveness of the two types when persuading consumers.
     Based on their study results, the researchers report that, overall, the two types can be equally influential. This is valuable for marketers to know because virtual influencers, compared to their human counterparts, are more reliably available, don’t change unless that’s intended, are more easily directed, and present less risk of becoming associated with distracting public scandals.
     Still, there are differences in the mechanism of persuasion for the two types. The human influencer’s power arises from development of a persona the consumer can identify with. The virtual influencer persuades based on the consumer’s perception of more objective, and therefore more useful, advice than would come from a human. The consumer impression that virtual-influencer creation requires artificial intelligence technologies strengthens the sense that the virtual influencer possesses strong analytical and logical capabilities.
     An implication, which is supported by the study results, is that marketers should employ human social media influencers for endorsements of hedonic, pleasure-oriented, items and employ virtual influencers for utilitarian item endorsements. The products used in the studies were a computer laptop as the utilitarian example and a hotel room as the hedonic example.
     Some virtual influencers, such as Any Malu and Anna Cattish are cartoonish versions of humans. However, most of the leading ones, such as Thalasya and Lu do Magalu, closely resemble a human’s appearance. This points to another issue for marketers to consider: Will such a close resemblance spook rather than enchant viewers?
     When people can’t tell whether a robot, a mannequin, or some other representation of a human is real or not, the people experience revulsion. If the android looks exactly like an attractive human being, people are attracted to it. If it looks similar to a human, but people can easily tell it’s not real, they’re amused. However, when the resemblance is very close, but they are not sure if it’s real, they’re creeped out. That dip in the positive emotion is why the effect is called the uncanny valley.
     It might be best to use a virtual influencer which resembles a human, but is easily distinguishable.

Successfully influence the most prosperous & most loyal consumer age group. For the specific strategies & tactics you need, click here.

Click for more…

Remind Consumers of Robots’ Competence 

Eclipse Celebrity Endorsers Who Moon 

Sidestep Celebrity Endorser Certification 

Creep Out Shoppers, But Explain

Curate Ads to Arouse Curiosity

As soon as a shopper focuses on your intentions to influence them toward buying a product, they become less likely to make the purchase. The effect is substantial. For instance, it cuts in half, on average, the persuadability of advertising. Researchers at University of Hohenheim attribute the effect to shopper skepticism and show that arousing curiosity via the ad can ease the skepticism.
     In the studies, consumers’ curiosity was aroused by showing pictures of gift items with information on the box labels too small to read or by listing prospective potato chip flavors with a few letters missing from each flavor name. In some of the studies and for some of the study participants, the ambiguity was subsequently resolved by clearly showing the full information.
     The resulting evidence was that aroused curiosity decreases skepticism about the messages in an ad and that resolved ambiguity produces pleasant feelings which spread to positive evaluations of items featured in the ad.
     A long train of research has shown how arousing curiosity in consumers and then satisfying the curiosity increases the potential of a sale. Research findings from Indiana University and University of Colorado-Boulder verified the value of a mystery ad format, in which you wait until the end to announce the brand name. Start off with an unusual story or absurd humor which dramatizes the category of item and hooks the ad’s viewer or listener into thinking “Who’s this commercial for, anyway?”
     These studies had to do with curiosity which is satisfied. Other research finds that unsatisfied curiosity motivates impulse buying. Gently kick prospective customers toward purchasing impulsively by prolonging their curiosity, advise researchers at University of Arizona and University of Washington. In one of their studies, they aroused curiosity by showing participants blurred images and assessed impulsive consumption by offering a quantity of chocolate candies and noting how many the person ate. When curiosity was aroused and a rewarding resolution was not provided, more chocolate candies were consumed.
     Another technique used to arouse curiosity was asking study participants to write about questions for which they wanted answers. The influence of curiosity without closure was seen not only in the choices made by the study participants, but also in their brain activity. People with unresolved curiosity showed elevations in blood oxygenation of the insula, a brain area associated with the desire for rewards when there is no surety of receiving the rewards.

Successfully influence the most prosperous & most loyal consumer age group. For the specific strategies & tactics you need, click here.

Click for more…

Cruise Through When People Suspect Selling 

Kick the Sale with Curiosity

Tag with Likeable or Memorable Taglines

What we most like as consumers may be quite different from what we best remember as consumers. According to a set of studies at University of Missouri, City University of London, and University of Arizona, that statement holds true at least for a marketing tagline—the slogan a brand intends to grab our positive attention and carve a lasting positive impression. For Walmart, it’s “Save Money. Live Better.” For Sears, it was “The good life at a great price.” The linguistic properties of a likeable tagline differ from those for a memorable tagline.
     The difference has to do with the ease of mental processing. All else equal, consumers like simplicity, so a slogan that’s easier to mentally process will be liked better. Such taglines are relatively shorter, use highly familiar words, and refer to intangibles—concepts such as satisfaction and love. For instance, in the studies, taglines such as “The cure for mankind” were liked better than taglines such as “The antidote for civilization.”
     But when the mental processing of the tagline requires more time and effort to understand, the payoff is that it’s better able to burrow into the brain, making it more memorable. In the studies, these slogans included words which are less common and referred to concrete characteristics—what we can see, hear, taste, smell, or feel. For instance, taglines such as “Your word is our wedding ring” were remembered better than taglines such as “We keep your promises.” Using a metaphor in a tagline might also add to the complexity of mental processing.
     Well-established brands have less to gain from increasing memorability than they risk losing from unlikability, note the researchers. Fluent slogans are best. But for brands new to a marketplace, memorability counts, so refer to concrete concepts and use less-common words.
     The researchers explored the effect of including the brand name in the tagline—"Horlicks guards against night starvation” versus “Guards against night starvation.” They found that the inclusion increased the mental processing toll and so would be better for brands establishing a reputation.
     Another set of studies revealed an additional wrinkle: People were asked to think about the Walmart and former Sears slogans. It turned out this increased the amount of money the people were willing to spend during a shopping trip. In fact, the amount was twice as much after thinking about the slogan than after thinking about the store name.

Successfully influence the most prosperous & most loyal consumer age group. For the specific strategies & tactics you need, click here.

Click for more…

Poke the Two Faces of Metaphors 

Give Shoppers Permission to Spend More 

Sensitize to Waste for Abnormal Produce

Order & Partition Custom Health Plan Options

The notion of choice architecture is that the format in which we present alternatives to the consumer significantly influences the consumer’s choices. A set of studies at Erasmus University Rotterdam, Columbia University, and University of Pennsylvania provides an example of choice architecture with findings about selecting a healthcare insurer. The researchers note that such decisions are complex because of the differences among plans in conditions covered, deductible amounts, and required copays; are important because of the effects of healthcare coverage on a subscriber’s lifespan and financial stability; and are of societal interest because of evidence that consumers often overpay for coverage.
     A primary reason consumers have difficulty making the best decisions involving future risk, such as healthcare insurance, is that people focus excessively on the worst possibilities and pay insufficient attention to the probabilities of the various future situations. Artificial intelligence which uses information about the individual plan shopper and the range of plan characteristics allows for optimizing choice.
     Consumers are likely to rebel against being given only one plan to select from. What’s needed is a set of recommendations and a nudge toward the best one rather than a directive. In my email exchange about the studies with Prof. Benedict Dellaert, the lead researcher, he wrote, “Besides the fact that consumers may not like receiving only one plan as a recommendation, another important reason to offer them a small set is that models/algorithms will often not have a perfect prediction for each consumer. Offering choice can improve the consumer-product fit.”
     The choice architecture tested in the studies combined ordering with partitioning. In one version of the presentations, healthcare coverage options were listed roughly in order from best to least good in likelihood of minimizing cost for the consumer. The options were then partitioned by initially limiting the display of choices to the top candidates, with the consumer able to view all the remaining alternatives by clicking on a button.
     Study participants were more likely to select an optimal plan with this type of choice architecture than with an unranked list or with only ordering or partitioning.
     Regarding you using such a choice architecture, Prof. Dellaert cautions, “The model/algorithm must be of sufficiently high quality, including in terms of reflecting the consumer’s best interest, for the ordering with partitioning to help. If the ordering is antagonistic to the consumer preference, the partitioning may instead harm the consumer decision outcome.”

Successfully influence the most prosperous & most loyal consumer age group. For the specific strategies & tactics you need, click here.

Click for more…

Reduce Risk Fears by Introducing Choices 

Compare Features to Ease Overload 

React When Faced with Reactance 

Betray the Betrayal Effect 

Influence the Compromise Choice Process 

Go Fourth in a Five-Item Horizontal Choice

Donate Positive & Negative Right for Charity

Marketers soliciting charitable contributions via emotional appeals need to determine the optimal blend of positive and negative in campaigns. How much to show smiling children and a message of gratitude for the positive impact of past contributions? How much to show sad children alongside a message that failure to contribute endangers lives of kids like these? Which objectives are best achieved with text saying that the healthy animals or lush landscapes shown in the photos are due to donations from people similar to the person viewing the solicitation? And which objectives are best achieved by text saying that the dead animals and damaged landscapes shown are because people failed to step up to help?
     Researchers at Complutense University of Madrid used such materials to evaluate study participants’ reactions. The study is distinctive and the conclusions more trustworthy because in addition to the behavioral measures of willingness to donate, neuropsychological data were gathered. Analyses of participants’ eye movements and their brain waves—electroencephalogram tracings—were interpreted to assess the attention paid to the solicitations and the impacts on emotional arousal from the solicitations.
     The overall conclusions provide guidance for when to use each type of appeal. Employ a negative appeal when your main objective is to increase donations in the short term. Those solicited will contribute in an effort to ease their negative feelings stimulated by the ad. But if your main objective is to engage the person for the longer-term, such as to enroll in monthly giving, use a positive appeal.
     The results also have implications for placement of emotion-arousing stimuli in the images and text of a printed solicitation: People spend more time exploring the text area when the ad is positively-toned and more time exploring the image area when the ad is negatively-toned.
     Generally, the positivity of an attractive solicitor will increase contributions. But a University of Alberta study found an exception to that rule. The researchers set up a set of fictitious websites on which visitors were asked to financially sponsor a child from a developing country.
     When the children were portrayed as having severe needs, facial attractiveness made no difference in the willingness to help. But when the level of need was not severe, people demonstrated less compassion for attractive than for unattractive children. The researchers attribute this effect to people assuming that attractive children would be better able to recruit help on their own.

Successfully influence the most prosperous & most loyal consumer age group. For the specific strategies & tactics you need, click here.

Click for more…

Profit Your Nonprofit by Arousing Gratitude 

Consider Karma in Contributions

Foment FOMO & Fear for Crypto Crazy

What persuades people to invest in cryptocurrencies, given the level of financial risk with even the most stable alternatives? In describing the popularity of cryptos, researchers at Universitat Ramon Llull note that financially vulnerable minorities are overrepresented among the range of investors. Therefore, perhaps the appeal is related to that of lotteries: The poor are drawn to dreams of cashing in big while ignoring the odds of crashing down big.
     Those researchers then go on to explore the power of FOMO. People’s caution about cryptos is dissolved by a fear of missing out on the astounding financial gains they believe others are achieving. For one of the studies, the researchers used as participants people who had recently invested in cryptos. The participants were asked to pretend they were considering another crypto investment. Some then read, “Other users, traders, and investors have posted comments and videos on this social media platform about the release of this crypto. They have commended the hype about this new crypto and how profitable it might be. So, you think you are missing out if you do not invest.” The others read, instead, “Other users, traders and investors have not mentioned anything about this crypto and have not shown any interest on this social media platform. So, you are not sure about the hype of this crypto and its profitability. You do not think you are missing out on anything if you finally decide not to invest.”
     As the researchers predicted, the fear of missing out resulted in higher agreement with, “It’s very likely that I will invest in this new crypto.” Additional studies in the set supported the conclusion that FOMO precipitated the investment interest and that this worked even when the investor had experienced prior losses. The implication is that sales of highly risky instruments can be increased with use of a FOMO appeal.
     However, consumer advocates and ethical financial advisors will want to curb financially vulnerable consumers’ attraction to crypto. The researchers found evidence that a fear message can counteract the FOMO effect. The text used in the study was, “9 out of 10 investors suffer severe losses when investing in crypto.”
     A separate project found the driving force of FOMO toward cryptocurrency investing is more likely in people who show high interpersonal agreeableness and low self-confidence. When a financial advisor identifies these characteristics in a consumer, delivering fear messages is especially important.

Successfully influence the most prosperous & most loyal consumer age group. For the specific strategies & tactics you need, click here.

Click for more…

Dissect the Shopper’s Risk Tolerance 

Launch Items Which Arouse Competitiveness 

Stick It to Some Shoppers