Chapter-8: Personal Influence

Chapter-8: Personal Influence

The Nature and Significance of Personal Influence:

Personal influence is best described as the effect or change in a person’s attitudes or behavior as a result of communication with others. It can occur in a number of ways. (i) Communication leading to influence may be source-oriented (by the influencer) or recipient-oriented (by the influencee). (ii) Communication may result in one-way or two-way influence. That is, the individual may influence while being influenced. (iii) Communication resulting in influence may be verbal or visual.

Personal influence is frequently used synonymously with the term word-of-mouth advertising or communication, even though the above classification indicates that they are not the same. Since word of mouth is oral communication, it is actually a subset of influence. There is evidence that favorable word-of-mouth communication can actually have more influence than the huge sums spent on advertising. Consequently, many companies advertise little and depend instead, on word of mouth promotion.

The marketer frequently tries to create synthetic or simulated word of mouth program by using celebrities in advertising campaigns. These spokespeople enter our homes via the media and speak to us as if it were a one to one conversation. This simulated personal influence may nevertheless be very effective.

There are three reasons why word-of-mouth seems to be dominant position in relation to impersonal communication: (i) Consumers view word-of-mouth as reliable and trustworthy information, which can help people to make better buying decisions. (ii) In contrast to the mass media, personal contracts can provide social support and give a stamp of approval to a purchase. (iii) The information provided is often backed up by social-group pressure to force compliance with recommendations.

Communication and Influence flow: Personal influence is necessarily dependent upon the process of communication. For years, marketers assumed that communication was a one-way process flowing from the marketer to consumers. Later, the process of communication and influence was found not to be an exclusively direct flow as had been originally supposed. Instead, influence can move from the mass media directly to influencials, or opinion leaders, who then through interpersonal networks pass on to their associates what they have seen.

However, problems with this view are (i) it suggests that an absolute leader exists for each informal group, when actually all group members have some amount of opinion leadership; (ii) information is assumed to flow only from the mass media to opinion leaders who disseminate it to followers - actually followers are also in touch with mass media but perhaps not to the same degree as leaders; and (iii) it is not always influence that is transmitted interpersonally, but in some cases simply information, which may be relatively free of influence. Because of these limitations, many communications researchers now suggest a multi-step interaction mode as a more accurate representation of personal influence.

Consider the following examples of the different directions that a verbal flow of communication and personal influence may take between a source and a receiver. (i) Source-initiated, one-way influence (this is most typical of the two-step flow model): Jim told me how good his Sony TV is, so I decided to buy one. (ii) Receiver initiated, one-way influence: I asked Jim what kind of tire he recommends. (iii) Source-initiated, two-way influence: I showed Susan our new Sony TV. She really wants to buy one when she will replace her old TV. Her interest made me feel better about our Sony TV. (iv) Receiver-initiated, two-way influence: I asked James what he knew about computer games. We have interesting discussion of various games.

Opinion Leadership in Marketing: Opinion leaders are people who are able in a given situation to exert personal influence. They are the ones to whom others look for advice and information. The term opinion leader is perhaps unfortunate because it tends to connote people of high status who make major decisions for the rest of us m In the marketing contest, such a designation is unfortunate because it erroneously suggests an absolute leader whom other seek to follow, In effect, opinion leadership is a relative concept, and the opinion leader may not be much more influential than his followers.

Nevertheless, opinion leaders can informally and subtly affect the behavior of others toward products, either positively or negatively. If they like a product or service, thy can help to assure its success, if they don’t like it, they can contribute to its failure.

Who are opinion leaders: (i) Opinion leaders have approximately the same social-class position as non-leaders, although they may have higher social status within the class; (ii) opinion leaders have greater exposure to mass media that are relevant to their area of interest; (iii) have greater interest and knowledge of the area of influences than do non-leaders; (iv) more innovative that non-leasers; (v) more familiar with and loyal to groups standards and values than are non-leaders. (vi) Opinion leaders may be general and situational.

Why opinion leaders attempt to influence others: Consumers, generally, do not speak about products or service unless they expect to drive some kind of satisfaction from the activity. There are four reasons that opinion leaders engage in word-of-mouth. (i) Product-involvement: use of a product or service may create a tension that may need to be reduced by way of talk, recommendation, and enthusiasm to price relief. For example, consumers often are fascinated by new items and feel they must tell someone about how good a product they have found. (ii) Self-involvement: the emphasis is more on ways the influencer can gratify certain emotional needs (gaining attention, feeling like a pioneer, having inside information, suggesting status, seeking confirmation, asserting superiority etc). (iii) Other-involvement: product talk fills the need to give something to the listener, to share one’s happiness with the influence, or to express care, love or friendship. (iv) Message-involvement: talking may also be stimulated by great interest in the messages used to present the product. For example, advertising that is highly original an entertaining may be the topic of conversation, especially since most of us feel we are experts on effective advertising and can thus speak as critics.

The involvement level of consumers, therefore, is a critically important dimension of their behavior as opinion leaders and as innovators.

Why followers accept personal influence: The marketers would certainly want to know the situational attributes user which opinion leadership will most likely occur so that he or she could actively cultivate the process. There are numerous product, individual, and group characteristics that can be expected to influence the acceptance of opinion leadership by followers. Product complexity give rise to the occurrence of personal influence, as would a product that is high on the amount of risk which consumers perceive to be associated with its purchase. Individuals who face new life of experience may be very receptive to information and consequently be quite susceptible to personal influence. A final factor to be mentioned that affects acceptance of opinion leadership is the individual’s personality. For example, some individuals are more persuasible than others.

What is an Innovation: New product innovation is an essential element of the dynamic economy and a critical activity for the marketer. As new and better products are developed, they are launched in the marketplace and their fate is determined by votes of consumers through their purchase or rejection of the products. New product introductions are becoming more expensive and the chances of product success are less than in previous years.

The term innovation can be defined as any idea, practice, or material artifact perceived to be new by the relevant adopting unit.

Innovations are categorized as (i) Continuous innovations: product alteration is involved, rather than the establishment of a totally new product (fluoride toothpaste, menthol cigerette). (ii) Dynamically continuous innovations: this may involve the creation of new products or the alteration of existing items (electric toothbrushes, wall size television, video telephone etc.). (iii) Discontinuous innovations: involve the establishment of new products with new behavior patterns (computers, automobiles).

The Adoption Process: The acceptance and continued use of a product or brand by an individual is referred to as adoption. The adoption process consists of: (i) Awareness- The potential adopter finds out about the existence of a product but has very little information and no well-formed attitudes about it. (ii) Comprehension- this stage represents the consumer’s having knowledge and understanding of what the product is and can do. (iii) Attitudes- here the consumer develops favorable or unfavorable behavioral predispositions toward the product. (iv) Legitimation- here the consumer becomes convinced that the product should be adopted. (v) Trail- if possible the consumer tests or tries the product or determines its utility. (vi) Adoption- at this stage, the consumer determines whether or not to use the product in a full-scale way.

Thus adoption is seen to be a sequence of events through which individual consumers pass over a period of time. Some consumers pass through these stages early in a product’s life while others may do so much later. In addition, the adoption process describes consumers who are actively involved in thinking about and considering a product.

The significance of the adoption process to the marketer is twofold. First: not all consumers pass though the adoption process with the same speed – some move swiftly, while others proceed more slowly; Second: the marketer’s communication forms vary in their effectiveness over the different stages in the adoption process. Individual may not complete the adoption process. The marketer should take care to minimize the marketing problems leading to consumer failure to complete the adoption process.

Marketing Implications of Personal Influence: It should be remembered that opinion leaders are not equally active foe all products- some products are very prone to personal influence. It may be difficult and expensive to control the process of personal influence. Using opinion leaders may be effective to diffuse information about such products as automobiles but may ineffective for products like refrigerators.

The marketer will want to address several questions when targeting prospects of a new product: (i) the target market’s innovative and early adoption propensities, (ii) its heavy volume potential, (iii) its susceptibility to influence, and (iv) the cost of reaching this group. This will require a systematic procedure utilizing information form concept testing, product testing, test marketing, and so forth. If the marketer finds that personal influence is potentially strong for the product, then he or she may desire to guide the process. There are several strategies which might be adopted: (i) identifying and using opinion leaders directly, (ii) creating opinion leaders, (iii) simulating opinion leaders, (iv) stimulating opinion leadership, and (v) stiffing opinion leadership.

•  Consumer Behavior @ Md. Akteruzzaman, Assistant Professor of Marketing, Chittagong University.