Question

The case Harnessing the Science of Persuasion, HBR, 2001. After carefully reading the case, reflect on and answer the following questions:

“Robert Cialdini discusses six persuasion tactics used to influence people. Pick any 3 out of these 6 tactics and find relevant examples from the marketing field. Your examples can come from advertisements, marketing communications, company practices and operations, or any other relevant company communication medium (foreign media). Discuss why your examples fit those three categories and justify your reasoning. Your answer should demonstrate you’ve done the reading and don’t forget to attach/include your examples to your essay.”

Answer 1

Robert Cialdini speaks about six persuasion tactics that will help to persuade or attract others. They are reciprocity, consistency, social proof, liking, authority and scarcity. In this case let us consider the first three that are Reciprocity, consistency and social proof

1.Reciprocity

                                    Reciprocity is based on the principle of giving what we want in return. Thus a good approach is expected to bring in better benefits while a bad approach may result in failures. In a marketing scenario, there are many techniques that may be adopted to attract consumers wherein this principle of Reciprocity may be applied. Making the customer feel special, giving freebies to the customer at first, after sale services etc may attract the consumers and would result in better marketing opportunities. For example, consider the timebucks platform, In this platform, the jobs are divided in such a manner so that those who does it are being paid online at the same time those who offer the job is being benefited as some of their blogs or sites are being appreciated. Apart from this, sites like Sparring mind, which is a blogging platform, Coppyblogger which is a free e book platform etc adopts this strategy to attract customers.

2.Consistency

                                    In this method, an active, public and voluntary commitment would result in the consumers being attracted towards the firm and thereby sticks to it. Being active in the real sense refers to consumer satisfaction and being committed refers to the accountability of the firm in itself to the customers. The act has to be voluntary and the consumers should be approached by the firm on a voluntary basis for its success. The foot in door technique well fits to achieve this persuasion. For example, consider the strategy of major firms like Amazon, Flipkart, UberEats, Swiggy etc. Their marketing is based on this strategy of consistency. Amazon, Flipkart etc achieves this feat by delivering variety of products at the doorstep of the consumer and also providing with the after service sales like product replacement and similar approaches. The companies like Swiggy focus on providing food with quality consistency so that it attracts its customers and would retain them for future.

3.Social proof

                                    The society always believes in proofs. For the success of a marketing strategy also, social proofing is a basic trait. Thus in order to influence a society, a firm needs to influence a group and an individual at first. For example consider the Yelp website which depends on customer or user reviews and posts it so as to engage more customers depending upon the reviews of each brand. The platforms like Amazon also does the same thing that they would get reviews of each customer for the product they purchase and then publishes the same on the platform which enables the other customers to realise the goodness or badness of a product and hence influences the decision making of the customer in their buying patterns.

                                                The above three methods on analysis states that persuasion is factor which a market economy can never imagine of getting away with and in this era of increasing competition both online and offline, innovative strategies needs to be brought in these method also so that the marketing strategy remains successful.