Stimulating referral behavior may backfire for men: The effect of referral failure on susceptibility to persuasion.

We present the referral-backfire effect, reflecting the phenomenon that consumers become less susceptible to persuasive attempts when they experienced referral failure. In two lab studies and one field study, we provide evidence for the effect and for the hypothesis that the effect occurs because referral failure is interpreted as a sign that the sender's social relations are threatened.Claim; Cognitive; Control; Control theory; Demand; Effects; Ego depletion; Implications; Model; Performance; Research; Self-control; Theory; Behavior; Studies; Field; Field study; Sign;

Investigating the Effects of a Persuasive Digital Game on Immersion, Identification, and Willingness to Help

Recent years have seen a tremendous rise in the development and distribution of persuasive games: digital games that are used to influence players’ attitudes and/or behavior. Three studies (NStudy 1 = 134; NStudy 2 = 94; NStudy 3 = 161) tested the effects of a persuasive game on immersion, identification, and willingness to help. The results showed that playing the persuasive game did not result in substantially stronger willingness to help, relative to the control conditions. Video and printed text resulted in more immersion than the digital game, but playing the game resulted in substantially higher perceptions of embodied presence

A comparison of three interactive television AD formats

This study explores the effects of interacting with three current interactive television (iTV) ad formats, using an Australian audience panel. Interaction with iTV ads has positive effects on awareness and net positive thoughts, which increase purchase intentions compared with the influence of regular ads. The telescopic format represents the best format, likely because it makes the most of the entertaining possibilities of iTV by offering additional long-form video; its superior performance cannot be explained readily by self-selection effects. The results suggest that the effectiveness of iTV ads should be measured by their interaction rate rather than the much smaller response rate, and iTV advertisers should consider ways to maximize interaction and response rates

Echoes of Persuasion: The Effect of Euphony in Persuasive Communication

While the effect of various lexical, syntactic, semantic and stylistic features have been addressed in persuasive language from a computational point of view, the persuasive effect of phonetics has received little attention. By modeling a notion of euphony and analyzing four datasets comprising persuasive and non-persuasive sentences in different domains (political speeches, movie quotes, slogans and tweets), we explore the impact of sounds on different forms of persuasiveness. We conduct a series of analyses and prediction experiments within and across datasets. Our results highlight the positive role of phonetic devices on persuasion

Building Persuasive Robots with Social Power Strategies

Can social power endow social robots with the capacity to persuade? This paper represents our recent endeavor to design persuasive social robots. We have designed and run three different user studies to investigate the effectiveness of different bases of social power (inspired by French and Raven's theory) on peoples' compliance to the requests of social robots. The results show that robotic persuaders that exert social power (specifically from expert, reward, and coercion bases) demonstrate increased ability to influence humans. The first study provides a positive answer and shows that under the same circumstances, people with different personalities prefer robots using a specific social power base. In addition, social rewards can be useful in persuading individuals. The second study suggests that by employing social power, social robots are capable of persuading people objectively to select a less desirable choice among others. Finally, the third study shows that the effect of power on persuasion does not decay over time and might strengthen under specific circumstances. Moreover, exerting stronger social power does not necessarily lead to higher persuasion. Overall, we argue that the results of these studies are relevant for designing human--robot-interaction scenarios especially the ones aiming at behavioral change

Effects of Online Consumer Reviews on Attitudes and Behavioral Intentions toward Products and Retailers

The purpose of this dissertation is to examine the role of consumer reviews in consumers’ decision making process. The current study aims to help researchers and practitioners understand how consumers process different type of information in online consumer reviews. The specific research objectives are to examine (1) how different type of online consumer reviews influence consumers’ responses toward the reviews (2) how different types of individual characteristics influence consumer processing of the content of the reviews, and (3) how consumers’ responses evoked by review content affect consumer attitudes and behavioral intentions toward the reviewed products and retailers. This study addressed two aspects of review-type: (1) type of product information in online consumer reviews (attribute-and-benefits reviews vs. benefits-only reviews), and (2) type of personal information disclosed by the reviewers (reviewers’ personal information vs. reviewer stories). The literature reviews guided the development of hypotheses and the model of the study in an online apparel store context. To test the hypotheses, this study employs an online experiment with a mock website. A total of 425 participants collected from consumer panels of marketing research firm were used for the analyses. The analyses revealed that reviews containing reviewers’ consumption stories, compared to those containing reviewer information, produce more positive thoughts, greater perceptions of reviews’ informativeness, and more favorable attitudes toward the reviews. Contradicting the predictions, there was no moderating effect of individual differences in chronic tendency to enjoy thinking and engage in thinking. Participants’ responses evoked by the reviews showed positive relationships with their attitudes and behavioral intentions toward the reviewed product and the retailer. Further discussion about the results, implications, and suggestions for future research are provided