Monday, February 10, 2025

Investigate Insulting’s Populist Persuasiveness

Although there’s past evidence people generally dislike incivility, politicians who lob cutting insults at their opponents are winning elections. Populism may be central to unraveling this paradox, according to researchers at University of Lausanne, University of Amsterdam, and University of Bern.
     The distinguishing view in populist sentiments is that society is divided into the common people, who are generally virtuous, and the elite, who generally intend to exploit the common people. The common people must continually be on guard that their welfare is not ravaged by the elite. Incivility serves as a way to challenge the norms of the elites, demand attention, and express frustration. With this in mind, the researchers hypothesized that uncivility toward the opposition, such as obscene insults, will help persuade people who are high in populist attitudes.
     To test this hypothesis, a group of U.S. consumers was recruited for a study. About 44% self-identified as Democrats, 27% as Republicans, 24% as Independent, and the remainder as none of those three designations.
     The study participants were administered an inventory to measure their degree of agreement with populist views. They also were asked their opinion on the topic of requiring parental consent for gender transition in teens, then presented arguments either for or against, and again asked their opinion. For some of the respondents, the arguments had been presented with a courteous view of the opposition (“I know some might disagree” or “I can respect that some people may think differently”). For the remaining respondents, the view of the opposition was designed to be rude (“I don't care what other people think. It’s fucking obvious” or “Every other opinion is just bullshit”). The degree of attitude change about the parental consent topic was calculated.
     As the researchers predicted, respondents reflecting populist views were persuaded to a greater extent by the arguments when those arguments were accompanied by rude statements about the opposition.
     However, the pattern of findings was different in a parallel study conducted with respondents in Switzerland, a culture which, compared to the U.S., leans more toward consensus than polarization. In Switzerland, there was no evidence that incivility was more persuasive than civility among people with strong populist attitudes. Indeed, it appeared the rude messages backfired when the message aligned with the Swiss respondent’s initial view—that is, a higher rejection of the supporting arguments.
     In applying these findings, then, attend to cultural differences in consensus-polarization.

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

Click for more…
Persuade Populists 
Image at top of post based on photo by Matt Hatchett from Pexels

Monday, February 3, 2025

Raise Referral Success Via Bigger Devices

Any organization experiencing customer turnover benefits from having current recipients of products or services personally suggest to others that they also give their business to the organization. And every organization experiences customer turnover.
     Solicit referrals to both strong and weak links: “Please recommend us to your colleagues, and recommend those colleagues talk about us to their colleagues.”
     Researchers at Friedrich-Alexander-Universität Erlangen-Nürnberg conclude that when you ask a current customer to make a referral, you also encourage them to use a laptop or personal computer, rather than a smartphone, to compose and send the request to each referred individual. That’s because referrals made via smartphone tend to be shorter and contain less positive content than those made on the larger devices, but longer, more positive recommendations stimulate better follow-through by the referral recipient.
     Those inferior characteristics of smartphone-based messaging can be attributed to how the small size of the screen and keyboard on the device make it more challenging to compose the referral. At the same time, the portability and ubiquity of smartphones could easily result in a greater number of referral messages sent out in response to your request than if the referring customer waits to do it on a laptop or PC. In accord with this, another of the researchers’ recommendations is to make it as easy as possible for a referral message to be completed on a smartphone. Auto-completion and pre-formulated text modules help here. Actually, these also could be helpful for composing a referral on a laptop or PC.
     Studies at City University of New York and Pennsylvania State University indicate that what you’d best include in any pre-formatted text modules depends on the degree of familiarity the recipient of the referral message currently has with the proposed supplier. If they’ve had few if any dealings with the organization previously, the best text should be thoroughly positive. This relaxes perceptions of risk generated by the prospect of transacting with an unknown.
     But if the recommended supplier is already well-known to the referral message recipient, text which qualifies the referrer’s expertise in making the recommendation is more important than whether the proposed supplier is described as flawless. In addition, researchers at Italy’s LUISS University and University of Bari suggest that in this latter situation, the text be more abstract than concrete, describing general upsides and concerns in doing business with the supplier rather than giving detailed examples.

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

Click for more…
Minimize Customer Turnover 

Image at top of post based on photo by Natalya Letunova from Unsplash

Monday, January 27, 2025

Explain Algorithms to Affected Individuals

Convincing a consumer to accept an AI-based unfavorable decision about them requires establishing trust in the algorithm by describing why the AI tool made the decision. To address this demand, organizations can provide, along with a decision, an explanation of how the machine logic reached its conclusion.
     Researchers at University of Calgary and Mount Royal University were interested in what characterizes the best of such post-hoc explanations. Their studies established that ones which include concrete, feasible steps the consumer can take to positively influence future outcomes were especially effective in preserving positive attitudes toward the decision and the marketer. The researchers name them sensitivity-based explanations because they describe how much the values of specific variables would have to change in order to alter the decision outcome.
     A scenario used in the studies was for a car insurance applicant who did not receive the best rate. A sensitivity-based explanation was, “If 10% or less of your driving took place at night, you would have qualified for the cheapest tier. If your average miles per month were 700 or less, you would have qualified for the cheapest tier.”
     The positivity of study participants’ ratings of fairness and of intention to do business with the insurance company were higher than for study participants given a case-based explanation: “This decision was based on thousands of similar cases from the past. For example, a similar case to yours is a previous customer: She was 38 years old, with 18 years of driving experience, drove 850 miles per month, occasionally exceeded the speed limit, and 25% of her trips took place at night. Claire was involved in one accident in the following year.”
     The researchers are suggesting that the marketer describe the logic of the particular decision. They are not suggesting that the marketer attempt to explain the entire logic of the AI model. This latter would almost surely overwhelm the customer with details. It also might reveal the marketer’s trade secrets or allow the customer to subsequently game the algorithm.
     I’ll add to those reasons the fact that the entire logic of the AI model may be unknown to the marketer. Aside from the challenge of earning trust from the consumer, the complexity of machine learning—AI systems which learn on their own beyond the data they’re originally fed—readily results in marketers questioning whether to grant trust. Marketers want decision-making transparency, too.

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

Click for more…
Relax Guardedness with Gricean Norms 
Image at top of post based on photo by Eugene Triguba from Unsplash

Monday, January 20, 2025

Utilize Imagination of Consuming Units

Studies at Michigan State University, Baylor University, and Virginia Tech indicate that “A Multipack of Four Body Washes for $16.00” will sell better than “A Multipack of Four Body Washes for $15.30” at an equivalent store in another town.
     A potential explanation for this is how a $16.00 price is simpler for the consumer’s brain to process than is a $15.30 price. But the researcher’s explanation is that the multipack’s easily-divisible price of $16.00 by its quantity of four draws attention from the whole bundle to each unit in the multipack. This facilitates consumption visions, such as each $4.00 body wash being used by multiple family members or in multiple locations, situations, and times. Consequently, buying this multipack is more easily justified than buying a multipack whose price is not easily divisible by its quantity, even though $15.30 is a lower amount.
     The researchers also found this effect with multipacks of six tissue boxes, eight toothbrushes, and eleven bags of cashews.
     Divisibility and consumption visions also play a part in how customers eat from multipacks. People eat less from what’s in a big package than from what’s in a set of small packages containing the same quantity as what’s in the big package. Researchers at Technical University of Lisbon and at Tilburg University in the Netherlands found that people hesitant about eating a food were more likely to overcome their hesitations when presented with small packages than when presented the equivalent amount in a large package.
     In addition, the people who got started on the small packages ended up eating more than did those who dug into the large package. The participants said they had believed small packages would help them limit their consumption. The opposite proved to be true. When faced with an additional small package, the dieter says, “Oh, it would be only a little bit more.” The explanation has less to do with the degree to which eating from a small versus large package sates hunger.
     Still, studies at Hofstra University and Baruch College find that consuming the entire contents of a single serving package gives more of a feeling of fulfillment than consuming the equivalent amount, and therefore not the entire contents, from a multi-serving package. And it applies to medicine, not only food. Patients feel a two-pill dose has been more effective when taking them from a two-pill container than from a twelve-pill container.

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

Click for more…
Hit Shoppers with a Two-by-Four 
Image at top of post based on photo by Roberto Sorin from Unsplash

Monday, January 13, 2025

Spend Consideration on Money versus Points

Many customer loyalty programs allow a member to use accumulated points to acquire items which also could be purchased from the marketer with money. Researchers at University of Calgary, The University of Western Ontario, and University of Georgia were interested in what determines which of the two currencies the customer will choose to spend.
     This matters because there are arguments for preferring our customers use their points. For instance, the researchers report prior studies showing that the action of redeeming points motivates further sales. But there are circumstances where we’d prefer to have customers build their point total for future use and give us additional cash income now.
     The researchers hypothesized that what is central to a customer’s decision whether to use their points or their money is the difference in how people conceptualize the two. Consumers tend to think of specific, relatively small dollar amounts in concrete terms, with a focus on the feasibility of the expenditure and on the gain in the short term. We’re accustomed to spending money and are able to define its value across a range of contexts.
     By contrast, people conceptualize loyalty program points in more abstract ways. For one thing, the value of a point is determined by the specific marketer so is hard for the consumer to concretely define. For another thing, the accumulation of points usually occurs in ways less direct than with how money is obtained. We get points while our mind is on making a purchase, not on the fruits of our labor, and we might be given bonus points by the marketer for reasons we don’t fully understand. Thinking about points carries the hypotheticals of thinking about the future.
     This reasoning, validated by the researchers’ studies, leads to recommendations: 
  • When you prefer customers spend their money rather than their points, offer items which are available promptly and are easy to use. 
  • When you prefer customers spend their points, offer items which are of highly desirable quality, with less attention to the practicality of the item. 
  • When you prefer customers spend their money, offer abundant concrete details about the items. 
  • When you prefer customers spend their points, offer experience items, such as concert tickets and hotel stays.
     Clearly, there are additional considerations for consumers. For example, they would be much more likely to use up their points if learning those points will expire very soon.

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

Click for more…
Profit from Status with Loyal Customers 

Monday, January 6, 2025

Realize Realities of Cause-Related Marketing

In cause-related marketing (CRM) promotions, a marketer pledges to donate a small portion of sales revenues to a nonprofit organization or cause. Past studies say such promotions improve brand attitudes and purchase intentions. But while taking note of those conclusions, researchers at Vienna University of Economics and Business, University of Hamburg, Vrije Universiteit Amsterdam, and University of Groningen say that the conditions under which the studies were conducted are not sufficiently representative of the typical conditions under which marketers conduct these promotions.
     The most common use of CRM promotions is by marketers of fast-moving consumer goods (FMCGs), such as in grocery stores, where a shopper is choosing from a multitude of alternatives under time pressure. The vast majority of past studies, however, have been conducted in lab or field settings where participants are choosing among a few alternatives with ample time to carefully consider them all.
     In their own study, the researchers analyzed 63 actual CRM promotions including a range of 20 grocery and drugstore product categories. The average duration of the promotions was 11 weeks, and the average donation amount was about 3% of the product price.
     The average sales lift from the promotions was about 5% per week. But the most successful of the promotions accounted for the realities of FMCG contexts: The shopper should want to buy the particular product for reasons other than the charitable contribution. Sales lift can more than double when the brand is a market leader in the category or the item is priced below the alternatives in the category. The sales lift also was greater for categories with few alternatives and when the price differences for equivalent items were small.
     The combination of contribution to a charity with discount for the customer was also explored in a Temple University, Aalto University, Hanken Swedish School of Economics, and Sichuan University study. Analysis of results showed that a moderate discount in this situation works better than no discount or a deep discount. The moderate discount used for the studies was 30% and the deep discount was 50%. In discussing their results, the researchers say a discount in the range of 10% to 30%—more than only 3%—would be best for increasing sales.
     Why doesn’t a deep discount boost item sales as much as a moderate one? Because the deep discount erases the motivation of feeling charitable. People are buying for the price alone.

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

Click for more…
Double Down on Cause Marketing 
Image at top of post based on photo by Kelly Sikkema from Unsplash