Listen with Benevolent Intentions

Listening sells. In a literature review article, researchers at University of Haifa and Stanford University point to the evidence that agents of influence who listen well are more persuasive than those who don’t. Good listening builds trust, and trustworthiness leads to the target of persuasion taking advice and accepting claims. Trust increases brand loyalty, purchase intentions, and post-purchase satisfaction.
     When the agent of persuasion is viewed by the target of persuasion as listening well, perceptions of competence of the agent grow. Interestingly, perceptions of the target of persuasion in their own competence also grow.
     The accuracy of all these statements does depend on our definition of good listening, though. And the definition of good listening is necessary if we’re to make use of the findings to improve our skills.
     Some listening skills covered by the researchers’ definition consist of verbal behaviors. Examples include: 

• Ask follow-up questions. These request more details on what the target of persuasion has just said. 
• Paraphrase what the target has said. Changing the precise phrasing used by the target is evidence you’re paying attention and not mocking. 
• Exclaim on what’s said. Periodically saying short phrases like “I see” and “Oh, interesting” signal attention without needing to interrupt the target. 
• Be attentively silent. Providing the opportunity for the target to complete expressing themselves projects receptivity to the message.

     Some listening skills concern nonverbal behaviors, such as looking at the target, smiling, and nodding.
     These verbal and nonverbal behaviors are observable. In their review, the researchers also highlight what is called “benevolent intentions,” an element which is not directly observable. This consists of the agent of persuasion’s positive regard for the target.
     Researchers at University of Texas-Arlington, University of Chile, and Universidad del Desarrollo studied “active empathic listening,” which refers to a salesperson integrating a client’s words and nonverbal messages for an understanding of the client’s beliefs, feelings, and intentions. These researchers measured salesperson self-rated AEL using questionnaire items, “I listen for more than just the spoken words,” “I ask questions that show my understanding of my customer’s position,” “I show my customers that I am listening by my body language (e.g. head nods),” and, “I sense why my customers feel the way they do.”
     When AEL was carried out, the client rated the service as being of higher quality than otherwise. This held true even if the client didn’t like the salesperson.

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

Click for more…

Embrace Shopper Expertise 

Prolong Sales Meetings with Holistic Listening 

Flirt with Deep Acting

Prompt Personalizing to Ease Change Resistance

Employees who personalize their workspaces are more committed to successfully implementing organizational changes. The University of Queensland researchers who verified this effect explain it in terms of territoriality—the feeling of ownership of the workspace—and change self-efficacy—the confidence an employee maintains that they’ll handle the challenges of the changes. When an employee’s need for territoriality is satisfied during periods of organizational change, change self-efficacy increases. Based on results from prior studies, the researchers theorize that this is because the employee’s self-identity then better incorporates the organizational identity.
     To establish territoriality, an individual will mark their space. Examples of marking include personalization, such as displaying diplomas and curated artwork on the walls and populating the workspace with items like books which are being read and mugs which trigger happy memories. When territoriality is threatened, the individual might engage in behaviors like erecting partitions.
     By encouraging workspace personalization, managers prepare their teams to commit to changes ahead. But the researchers caution against directing employees to personalize. That would risk erasing the autonomy and, therefore, individual self-identity associated with the personalizing. Taking account of this caution, I recommend instead prompting personalizing, such as by the manager commenting positively on the personalization by some team members in order to inspire other team members to participate.
     The researchers note that the advantages of workspace personalization can be undone with organizational policies of hot desking—assigning an employee a workspace for the day when they come into the office—and clean desk initiatives—which discourage the presence of items not directly related to one’s specific work tasks.
     Not that self-confidence from personalizing is always good. Colorado State University researchers found that drivers of cars with bumper stickers are more likely to honk, tailgate, and cut off other vehicles than are drivers of cars without bumper stickers. This held true whether the sentiment on the bumper sticker was about aggression or acceptance. “My Kid Is an Honor Student” as well as “My Kid Can Beat Up Your Honor Student.” “Visualize World Peace” as well as “Don’t Mess With Texas.”
     Moreover, the “bumper sticker aggression” showed up with window decals and personalized license plates. Consumers were using the personalizing of their cars to justify the expression of aggression in socially acceptable ways.
     Acceptable doesn’t necessarily mean safe. The Colorado researchers report that aggressive driving causes about two out of three auto accidents involving physical injury.

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

Click for more…

Lead Your Customers Through Changes Gradually 

Enable Acceptable Aggression

Constrain Politician Parodies to Controllables

Among negative political ads are those in which the views, personality characteristics, speech patterns, or even physical traits of the opponent are mocked. Ridicule can entertain and arouse, leading to greater social media engagement. But to what degree does that happen? asked a team of researchers at Sorbonne Business School, Mohammed VI Polytechnic University, EDC Paris Business School, Paris‐Est‐Créteil University, and California State University-Los Angeles.
     They found that the answer depends on whether what’s being ridiculed is a characteristic of the politician which is in the politician’s control or not. In one of the studies, French consumers were asked their intention to share a parody which ridiculed a characteristic of a politician. The politician was Emmanuel Macron. The controllable characteristic—used in the parody with some of the study participants—was Mr. Macron’s arrogance. The uncontrollable trait—used in the parody with the other participants—was Mr. Macron being married to an older woman. These two traits were chosen because Mr. Macron had been widely derided for each.
     People expressed greater intention to share the parody when the theme was a controllable trait. Data analyses indicated the reason is that mocking an uncontrollable trait arouses moral objections in the audience. This explanation was supported by results from the researchers’ analyses of parodies of political figures which had been posted on YouTube along with readers’ comments on such parodies.
     The implication for those aiming to win impact is to avoid satire which targets uncontrollable traits of the opposing politician. There’s clear evidence doing otherwise jeopardizes the social media sharing which helps the message go viral. The researchers also warn that the backlash aroused by parodist mudslingers can easily damage the reputation of the poster.
     Parodies are ridicule packaged in humor. Humor can serve as a distraction. The laughter keeps the audience from thinking about counterarguments. But a potential problem is that what some people consider to be funny, others don’t. If the humor falls flat, all that’s left is the ridicule. Your parody risks being seen by the consumers as mean-spirited, and that can interfere with your selling appeal.
     Researchers at University of Massachusetts-Amherst demonstrated how humor differs even between the U.S. and the U.K., both of them individualistic cultures. Other research has shown how collectivist cultures—like in Japan—and family-oriented cultures—like in Mexico—come to dislike marketers who seem to depend on ridicule to make a point.

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

Click for more…

Endorse Policy, Not Character, Political Attacks 

Avoid Satire in Comparatives

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