Dear Sir/ Madam,
RE: Effect of Priming in Advertising
I hereby write to lay bare the role of priming in doing business, in the selling of goods and services. In the world of trade, it is obvious that the service or goods provider will look for means and ways of ensuring that they have a good customer base for their products. This means that a company or organization will have to market their products, and this is the point at which priming becomes helpful. Priming is a psychological way in which earlier stimulus can influence a response a later stimulus (Bray &Scott 102). This means that once a supposed client has encountered something; they will be influenced to make a later decision based on what they saw from the beginning. This calls for creativity on the part of the advertiser. They need to use mechanisms that will influence the client to relate two things in order to reach a conclusion of making a purchase.
Priming is the ultimate technique that most companies are using in order to attract their clientele. One such company is the Whole Foods’ splendid Columbus Circle in New York City. As you enter the store, one is met with a whole area filled with freshly cut flowers probably communicating to the shoppers know that all that is sold therein is bursting with freshness. This communicates that the vegetables and fruits are equally as fresh as the flowers that are welcoming visitors from the entrance. Perhaps this is one good example of priming. It may not come as a surprise that these flowers make the products of the store sellable because it totally shows that there is a freshness that can be trusted in the products. This form of contextual priming will ultimately activate the product attributes to the consumer and, therefore, increases the likelihood customers will buy the products.
Priming is always related to some behavioral outcomes, and that is why it is supposed to influence a decision and lead to a certain form of behavior. The altered or change of behavior may even occur without a person knowing all thanks to priming (Herr 69). It so happens that there are automatic casual effects that come with the stimulus and one ends up making decisions they never anticipated. This is as a result of complex social behaviors that originate from the impulse to do something that is beyond control. Priming has, therefore, been used artistically to make people make decisions that reflect on their behavior towards a certain stimulus.
A major experiment has been conducted on an individual’s accuracy in answering questions. Once a person has been exposed to some cues with regard to the questions chances are that they might get the question right but if they were not exposed to the cues then they will get the questions wrong (Yi 43). The same principle applies in the issue of priming. Advertising happens to be a real world prime especially when it comes to the food industry. People will tend to buy food that they have been primed to buy simply because they would want to satisfy that urge to buy and have a taste of what it is and how it tastes. This means that people use schemas as well as heuristics to think in order to make decisions concerning the purchases they would wish to make. People use social cognition to make decisions that affect them and the social world in which they live. This then leads them to making decisions pertaining to selection, interpretation and remembrance of information that will motivate them to make decisions. It is no wonder that fast food sales keep increasing each day because of how they are presented to the masses. Priming in this case serves as a means to test for automatic effects that come when one is stimulated to perform a specific task.
Works cited
Bray, James & Scott, Maxwell. Multivariate Analysis of Variance. Beverly Hills, CA: Sage. 1982
Herr, Paul M. (1989), "Priming Price: Prior Knowledge and Context Effects," Journal of Consumer Research. 1989, 16 (June), 67-75.
Yi, Youjae. “Cognitive and Affective Priming Effects of the Context for Print Advertisements.” Journal of Advertising. 1990, 19 (2), 40-48.
