Persuasion

This website has been created to give the audience insight into how to create a persuasive website and how to persuade customers into buying their product with web design, message strength, credibility, and mood. The overarching model that will be used is the Elaboration likelihood model (ELM), one of the most popular models of persuasion in psychology.

The Elaboration likelihood model (Petty & Cacioppo, 1984) describes persuasion and persuasion processes. Elaboration is the extent to which a person thinks about a message and likelihood is the probability that the person will or will not change his or her behavior. The ELM posit how processing may occur through central or peripheral routes (Petty, Cacioppo, & Schuman).

Two main factors determine the route a person uses to process a message: motivation and ability (Petty & Cacioppo, 1984). The central route occurs when a person puts a great deal of effort and scrutiny into processing information that is relevant and then elaborates on the message. High motivation and having the ability to process the information affects whether a message is centrally processed. The other route to persuasion is the peripheral route, which occurs when a person lacks motivation, does not pay as much attention to the persuasive message, elaborating less, and instead gathers information from peripheral cues and heuristics. Heuristics are learned knowledge structures such as a “rule of thumb” to allow a person to make a quick decision with minimal cognitive effort (Chaiken & Maheswaran, 1994). Peripheral cues include factors such as mood (Sinclair, Lovsin, & Moore, 2007), source credibility (Chaiken & Maheswaran, 1994), and length of message (Petty & Cacioppo, 1984) when making decisions about a persuasive message.

For examples of central and peripheral processing differences in advertising visit the following link: Elabration Likelihood Model Example

Many have expanded to study if the ELM has the same effect online as it did through other mediums. Chen and Lee (2008) found that participants in an online shopping study with high levels of conscientiousness and agreeableness processed through the central route. On the contrary, participants with high levels of openness and emotional stability tended to process through the peripheral route. These run similar to the original methods of the ELM as primed rational thinkers tend to process centrally and emotional thinkers tend to process peripherally.

Some who have studied the ELM online have found different results. In SanJośe-Cabezudo’s, Gutiѐrrez-Arranz’s, and Gutiѐrrez-Cillán’s (2009) study, they suggest that there might be a combined influence of both the central and peripheral routes as some peripheral manipulations such as web design affected the perception of high elaboration participants. Overall, they found that serious websites (opposed to amusing websites) are more efficient when dealing with brand names and have higher purchase intent. But with people driven by entertainment when searching online, amusing websites are not to be discounted. It all depends on the motivation of the customer and the product being sold. This still seemed to function mostly as the ELM predicts but with some of the influences on persuasion possibly combined.

This website relies on the ELM when explaining the behavior of customers pertaining to persuasion as there is no other persuasion model that currently reflects internet usage and persuasion. In the future this might change as more research is conducted.