Persuasive Advertising
Persuasion runs indelibly through all aspects of our lives. Some instances are subtle (e.g., effects of entertainment media), others can be in-your-face annoying (e.g., political communications). If asked, and given sufficient time, most people can come up with a long list of everyday persuasion attempts and practices. However, we suspect that at the top of pretty much everyone’s list would be advertising. Whether it is the result of constant exposure to ads, their often entertaining nature, or simply because of our (American) hyperconsumer culture, there are few things that more quintessentially capture the notion of persuasion than advertising.
We love the ads (at least, we watch a lot of them), we hate them (at least, we often devise elaborate schemes to avoid watching them), and we may even fear them (mind control). In fact, the early fears about the persuasive power of propaganda on citizens in the 1930s and 1940s soon morphed into worries about the persuasive power of advertising, particularly the worry about subliminal persuasion through advertising
Given advertising’s prominence in the domain of persuasion, it is not surprising that theories of persuasion have played a central role in scholarly research on effects of advertising (and marketing communications more generally). In this chapter, we provide a review of scholarly work on persuasion in the marketplace. However, we hasten to admit that a thorough coverage of all of the applicable persuasion theories and their tests is beyond the scope of this chapter. There
There are numerous theories of persuasion that have implications for advertising and marketing, many of which are covered in this volume. Rather, we have chosen to highlight the persuasion theories that have been most influential in advertising, marketing, and consumer behavior research over the last 30 years. Some of these theories will be