Lecture 4: Psychology of Sale - Omega Strategies Flashcards
persuasion knowledge (PK) model
• PK develops over time • PK has (mainly) negative consequences • PK determines how skilful people cope with a persuasion attempt
examples of resistance
“I don’t like it”
“I won’t do it”
“I don’t believe it”
three forms of resistance
- reactance
- skepticism
- inertia
if there wasn’t _______ , there would be no need for _______
if there wasn’t resistance , there would be no need for persuasion
what are omega strategies about
reducing resistance
reactance
resistance to the influence
• Persuasion can threaten feelings of freedom of
choice
• Results in motivation to resist the influence attempt (reactance)
• Can result in opposite behaviour
• Reactance is caused be the influence attempt itself and not its content
skepticism
resistance to the proposal
- Focus lies merely on the content of the persuasion attempt
- Skepticism about the proposed change
elaboration likelihood model in short
central and peripheral routes to attitude change
inertia
resistance to change
- Hard to change as not related to the content of persuasion
- Resistance with the aim to preserve the status quo and avoid change
- Focused on the past
- No active consideration of the persuasion attempt
tactics to reducing reactance- general
• Don’t activate it in the first place
• Remember, reactance = perceived threat to freedom of choice
• Degree of reactance felt depends on:
1. Number and importance of freedoms threatened
2. Blatancy or coerciveness of the threat
tactics to reducing reactance: specific
- minimise the request
- depersonalize the request
- the power of yes
- acknowledging resistance
- providing choices
minimize the request
- Minimising the request decreases reactance
- Incremental change is easier to achieve than abrupt change
- Smaller requests elicit less reactance
- Cf. Foot-in-the-door technique and “even a penny will help” technique
depersonalise the request
• Reactance to an influence attempt is rather personal
• “I don’t want to be influenced by you!”
• Depersonalisation of the request takes away this
personal component and therefore decreases reactance
How?
• Disavow personal authorship of the request
(“it’s the manager’s policy”)
• Deny any ad hominem element in the request
(“it’s the same deal we give everybody”)
• Storytelling
the power of yes
- Limiting freedom of choice is a “no”
- Always saying yes (or avoiding no’s) is an effective tactic to avoid reactance
- “Yes and” instead of “No, instead”
- Telling someone what to do raises less reactance than telling them what not to do
acknowledging resistance
- Focuses on already raised resistance
* Acknowledging resistance dramatically increases compliance
providing choices
- Offering only one alternative focuses all feelings of resistance on that alternative
- In case of several alternative, resistance can be satisfied by one of them, helping the other (s)
- Having a choice provides a sense of control (more freedom = less reactance)
Tactics to deal with skepticism
- Guarantees
- change the comparison
- reframe the proposal
guarantees
- No matter what the customer does, they cannot lose
- Skepticism in sales = “is it the right thing to do/buy?”
- Guarantees can remove any doubt
- They imply high quality/reliability
- Only a small percentage of sales are actually returned
change the comparison
- Every judgement involves an implicit comparison
- It is often easier to change behaviour by changing the comparison than by changing the offer
- Efficacy 0f sales prices build on this principle
reframe the proposal
• Casting new meaning to an alternative • Remember loss and gain frames --> People want to avoid losses
tactics to deal with inertia
- disrupt
2. increase self-efficacy
disrupting inertia
• Inertia results in disengagement and
disinterest
=
• Disrupt inertia through unusual and confusing messages
- Increases motivation for engagement
- Confusion can occupy a person’s resistance
increase self-efficacy
- “the judgement of how well one can execute courses of action required to deal with prospective situations”
- Inertia is often rooted in the belief that one can not achieve a certain goal
- Fear of choices, unknown, or transitions
- Increasing self efficacy/confidence decreases inertia
conclusions about resistance and omega strategies
• There are three different types of resistance
➡ Reactance
➡ Skepticism
➡ Inertia
• Different types of resistance require different types of tactics (omega)
• Omega strategies are relatively cheap
• Alpha strategies work because they overwhelm resistance
• Omega strategies work because they take away resistance
• Omega strategies need desire and reluctance to be high to work
