2016-‐3-‐16
The Application of the Elaboration likelihood
model of persuasion in Online Advertisement
COM 610 FINAL PROJECT
YANLING YANG
[email protected]
DREXEL UNIVERSITY
Yanling Yang Email: [email protected]
Introduction-The elaboration likelihood model of persuasion
The Elaboration Likelihood Model(ELM) was introduced by Petty and Cacioppo in 1981.
When environment encourage people’s motivation to engage in thinking, the elaboration
likelihood is said to be high, which means people would think carefully about all the
information based on their prior experience and knowledge. Petty and Cacioppo (1981)
proposed a concept of two distinct paths of thinking. They suggested that there are two
routes of information processing, one is the central route when elaboration likelihood is
high, and the other is peripheral route when elaboration likelihood is low. Their previous
study on social psychology (Petty & Cacioppo, 1979) also supports the view of different
processes are used in high and low elaboration likelihood condition. For example, under
high issue involvement, the strength of an argument would have stronger impact on
persuasion (Petty, Cacioppo, & Heesacker, 1981).
According to Kitchen et al. (2014), because the ELM helps to explain how
individuals process information, this model is most often used to investigate attitude
changes by advertising researchers. After more than 30 years since ELM published, there
are still numerous studies to enrich the applications of ELM. Mark, Schmitt, and Lyytinen
(1997) identified that perceiving credibility of message source as an important factor in
peripheral route, while strength of the argument is an important factor for central route
messages. Particularly, attitude changes using central route information processing would
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be challenged by solid contrary information people possessed in the past (Petty, Haugtvedt,
& Smith, 1995). Besides applied research focusing on the field of consumer behavior and
advertising, research has been investigating how persuasive strategy influence people’s
acceptance for new information system. Bhattacherjee and Sanford (2006) suggest that
individual with central route information processing tend to be affected by quality
argument about potential benefits, returns and costs of information system acceptance.
While individuals with peripheral route information processing would be persuaded by the
identification with the source.
Although the ELM has been considered as the most influential theories in
marketing communication research (Szczepanski, 2006), there are some limitations of the
theories. The theories give only two route of thinking, however in real life, the situation is
much more complex. Several studies examine the role of moderate elaboration likelihood,
between high and low elaboration likelihood (Petty & Cacioppo, 1984; Petty & Priester,
1994). Even so, seldom studies explain the interaction between the three levels: high,
moderate and low. Choi and Salmon (2003) pointed out that the ELM is still fail to explain
the interaction. Nonetheless, it is now widely acknowledged that attitude changes can be a
result of both central and peripheral routes.
Application of ELM- Online Advertisements
The prevalence of Internet and electronic commerce lead to the rapid growth of online
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advertisement. Online advertisement is considered as an important source of information
for consumers, and is becoming increasingly lucrative for business worldwide (Nakamura
& Abe, 2005; Sonal & Preeta, 2005). A study shows that online advertising hit $99 billion
in 2012, a 16.2 percent of increase over the previous year (Dohnert, 2013).
1. Webpage Banner
Particularly, banner advertisement on webpages is a new form of advertisement. Customers
can choose either to ignore or click on to see more information. According to Tsao, (2014)
the world wide web enrich man-machine interactivity which would make the persuasion
more effective. According to the ELM theory active consumers would more likely to follow
the central route of information procession, in which more core elements are needed to
evaluate messages. Studies suggest that formation and changes of attitudes through central
route are tend to be more enduring, resistant to change and more predictive of behavior
(Petty & Cacioppo, 1984; Morris, Chong, & Singh, 2005; Keng, Liao, & Yang, 2012).
While low-involvement consumers, tends to notice peripheral attributes, such as the color,
the transaction context, or the background music when forming attitude toward an
advertisement (Wang et al., 2009). For audiences using peripheral route of information
processing, the formation of attitude would base on expert opinions, brand reputation, the
identity of endorser, the product’s country of origin, and other peripheral cues (Petty &
Cacioppo, 1984). Business companies often use peripheral attributes when designing
websites or online advertisements, in order to enhance their persuasive messages. For
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example, some webpage banners would use bright colors such as red and yellow. Some
banners use vivid animation to draw people’s attention. Particularly, during the period of
Black Friday sale, the homepage of certain stores would use large font size and bright color
to intensify the message of promotion, such as “Final Sale!” and “Your Last Chance”.
2. YouTube Advertisement - Short clip of video
In 2015, Tsao (2014) examined routes to persuasive online advertising. He find that
purchase intention forming through peripheral route follows: peripheral cues→ hedonic
value → purchase intention. Therefore, peripheral route to persuasion can apply to
advertisement for hedonic products. For example, advertisement for video games and
movie on YouTube would generally use exciting music and graphic, such as scenes of
fighting, escaping from monsters, and the sound of screaming for horror films or laughing
for comedic film. For example, an iPad video game’s commercial successfully made its
way to the second most viewed YouTube video in 2015 globally. The reason why this
advertisement is so popular is that it used elements such fun, color, humor, violence, plot,
and music. The advertisement looks more like a funny movie than an advertisement. As
can seen from the comments below that video, the video makes people laugh and happy.
The success of this advertisement can also be reflected by the popularity of the game.
Statistic showed that this popular video game brought up to $1.15 million of revenue per
day in 2015 (McAlone, 2015).
3. Political campaign online advertisement
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According to Pew Internet (Smith, 2009), more than half of voting-age Americans used the
Internet to share information about election during the 2008 presidential campaign. More
and more people use the Internet to learn and share information about candidates. The
websites of candidates have an increasingly important role in promoting (Endres &
Warnick, 2004; Song & Bucy, 2007). The Web sites is a different form of communication
between potential supporters with the candidates. The intention of the website is to
persuade people to vote for them. They normally contain interactive features, such as
videos, podcasts, RSS and alternate languages. While news coverage pays attention to
peripheral cues or information (Perloff, 1993), such as personalities, “horse race” aspects,
and shallow explanation of issues (Rudd & Fish, 1989), Web sites provide a platform for
candidates to present in-depth issue coverage, which would serve as information needed
for information processing using central route. Study suggests that peripheral image
information about political candidates would influence how individuals searching
information from political Web sites, resulting changes in attitudes towards candidates. As
we can see from most candidates’ official website. Lots of Images are used to persuade
people. Especially in the front page, it would usually display a portrait of the candidates
with a confident smile (See: https://www.hillaryclinton.com/).
Besides official websites, social media also plays an increasingly important role in the
presidential campaign advertising. Social media provides candidates a platform to show
their opinions and interact with voters. For example, Donald Trump’s Tweets sometimes
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draw media’s attention due to his “outrageous comments” (See Engel, 2016). Celebrities
also make public posts or tweets to support candidates, which serves as a peripheral cue to
persuade people.
The Internet changes the traditional way of political campaign advertisements. The
proper use of both central route and peripheral route of thinking would bring remarkable
effects.
4. Advertisement in YouTubers’ video
YouTubers or YouTube celebrities are a group of people famous for their videos on
YouTube. YouTubers build their popularity through originality and authenticity. People like
to see genuine feedback of products on YouTube, compared to TV commercials. Besides,
most YouTubers would film in a comfortable environment, such as in their home, and use
relaxing background music. This elements refer to the peripheral cues in ELM models,
which makes people feel relaxed and enjoy watching this type of video. With over millions
of subscribers and views, Business companies see the potential benefit by using YouTubers
to promote products. According to digital researchers L2, on YouTube, 57% of results for
beauty brands term searches are videos made by YouTubers. Digital IQ Index®: Beauty |
U.K. found that L’ Oreal group owns four of the top five Beauty channels. The persuasive
messages sent by YouTuber use both central and peripheral routes in viewers’ information
processing. Some YouTubers would focus on the product itself, demonstrating details about
the products. Others emphasis on their personal preferences, packaging of the products and
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feelings after using the products. As a result, with trust in YouTubers, viewers would tend
to agree with the information and form favorable attitudes to the products.
5. Online Pharmacies
Besides daily necessities, official supplies and other products, people can now buy
medicines online through online pharmacies. According to MarkMonitor, there were nearly
3000 websites selling prescription medicines. However, online pharmacies are recognized
as a potential threat to public health. A survey showed that prescription of over-the-counter
drugs was the fifth health topic searched on the Internet (Fox, 2004). According to a study
on online pharmacies by Orizio et al. (2010), 80% of the online pharmacies sample they
studied did not request for a medical prescription by the consumer’s physician. More
importantly, the persuasion tactics they used on the websites are somewhat misleading.
According to the ELM (Petty and Cacioppo, 1984), peripheral route attitude change
is determined by factors that are related to the issue but do not focusing on the intrinsic
characteristics of the issue. Most online pharmacies websites enhance peripheral reflection
and neglect the intrinsic characteristics of the drugs about benefits or side-effects (Orizio,
et al., 2010). For example, most online pharmacies’ websites highlight the lower price
comparing to pharmacies, or they offer membership for people to get lower prices. They
also used sales arguments to encourage customers to buy more, or offer free delivery if
customers buy more than a certain price. The websites also recommend customers to buy
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specific drugs together with the selected drugs, showing how much money you can save
by buying together, and indicating other customers usually buy them together.
The highlight of peripheral cues may encourage customers to buy more medicines.
However it’s unethical for online pharmacies to intentionally obscure the side-effects and
ingredients of medicines to consumers. One limitation of the discussion is that it is based
on a study conducted in 2010, the regulations on online pharmacies advertisement are
probably changed since then.
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