W10: Social Influences

Question 1

What is a reference group?

Answer 1

An actual/imaginary group that has a significant influence on an individual’s evaluations, aspirations and behaviour.

Question 2

What causes virality?

Answer 2

STEPPS

1. Social currency (make person look good)
2. Triggers (connected to stimuli that are being talked about currently)
3. Emotion (evoke feelings)
4. Public (to try to make behaviour visible)
5. Practical Value
6. Stories (weave a story around the product)

Question 3

What powers can a group exert?

Answer 3

1. Referent Power (e.g. aspirational influences of a celebrity)
2. Information/Expert Power
3. Legitimate Power
4. Reward/Coercive Power

Question 4

What are the different types of groups?

Answer 4

1. Membership Groups (e.g. families, clubs, associations)
2. Aspirational Groups (e.g. high performing athletes, celebrities)
3. Dissociative Groups (that you want to distance yourself from)

Question 5

What are the interpersonal influences on behaviour?

Answer 5

Cialdini’s 7 Principles

1. Automaticity
2. Commitment and Consistency
3. Reciprocity
4. Scarcity
5. Social Validation
6. Liking
7. Authority

across la

Question 6

What is the automaticity principle?

Answer 6

Consumers (especially in low involvement situations) behave mindlessly.

The “because” heuristic.

Question 7

What is the commitment and consistency principle?

Answer 7

People wish to appear consistent and to adhere to commitments.

1. Foot in the door technique
   - asking for a small favour first, then asking for a larger favour
2. Low-balling technique
   - bait and switch
   - works because commitment makes consumers think of several reasons favouring choice “mere thought” effect

Question 8

What is the reciprocity principle?

Answer 8

Consumers feel obligated to return favours no matter how small they are

1. Inexpensive gifts can cause obligation to reciprocate
2. Door in the face (large requests followed by small requests)
3. That’s-not-all (sweetened deal)
4. Multiple-deescalating requests (making repeated smaller requests that go down in size)
5. even-a-penny

Question 9

What is the scarcity principle?

Answer 9

Things that appear scarce are more valuable.

Question 10

What is the social validation principle?

Answer 10

• Others’ preferences predict my preferences.
  e. g. showing a list of previous donations, large bills in the charity box
• Might explain why popular restaurants do not just increase the price to earn additional surplus from patrons (long queues = social validity)

Question 11

What is the liking principle?

Answer 11

Affect for the salesperson can translate to affect for the product.

• familiarity
• physical attractiveness
• similarity
• impression management (ingratiation)
• messengers of good/bad news

Question 12

What is the authority principle?

Answer 12

Persons in authority who appear to have the power to give rewards/punishment can be very persuasive
e.g. uniform, titles