Uma R. Karmarkar, Zakary L. Tormala. Believe Me, I Have No Idea What I’m Talking About: The Effects of Source Certainty on Consumer Involvement and Persuasion. Journal of Consumer Research. 2010
- Research question:
Three different experiments are conducted to prove the above hypothesis using a restaurant review altering the certainty and expertise with various arguments. The objectives of these experiments include the testing of hypothesis based on the feedback of the participants on a restaurant review altering the certainty of the message and the expertise.
Experiment 1 aims at proving that altering the source certainty and the expertise has an effect on the expectancy violations. The experiment also aims at examining other source perceptions by manipulating the expertise and certainty as a secondary objective.
Experiment 2 is a continuation of the results of the experiment 1 examining the effect implications for persuasion and involvement. The experiment 2 of the research study aimed at assessing the attitude and measuring the involvement feelings of the participants through strong arguments of restaurant review by varying the review expertise.
- Background information:
The research pertains to analyzing the effects of source expertise and source certainty through a message and assessing the attitude of the participants. Attitude certainty is the confidence feeling that an individual has on an opinion or an evaluation. Attitude studies are popular in the fields of consumer behavior and social psychology. Attitude measurement studies are having a great influence over choice and behavior. Information is readily available with the people in the means of social networking sites and online resources. In this research study, the attitude of the people are measured based on the assessment and persuasion of the message from source certainty and source expertise.
Source certainty has a huge impact on persuasion and the research stud explores this aspect. The experiments in the research study prove that source certainty enhances the persuasion impact by a message. This aspect refers to the manner in which the message is delivered to persuade a person to take a decision. High source certainty persuades the people behavior in a more and effective manner is the common belief but it differs according to the situation and the people. Source certainty studies are mostly objective in context but the process of decision making is a subjective context. Hence source certainty has changed over the years and source credibility plays a major role here. Overall source certainty plays a major role in making decisions and judgments either of objective or subjective nature and has a positive correlation with the accuracy of the message.
Source expertise is the next major variable used in the research. The restaurant reviews by experts will have more persuasion on the readers and have a great impact in making a decision. The research studies on source expertise reveal that people seek expert knowledge before making a decision. Expert knowledge and message have persuading abilities on the individual’s minds. This research tests the source expertise and certainty variables in attitude formation and persuasion by altering both the variables through a series of experiments.
- Data & methodology:
Primary data is collected from the college students in the form of experiments subjecting them to persuading messages in the form of a restaurant review and recording their feedback. The details of the research methodology and data collection done in the research study are reviewed in this section.
- Purpose:
The purpose of the study is to test the Incongruity hypothesis of message persuasion by altering the variables of source certainty and source expertise to ascertain the attitude of the respondents.
- Methods:
Experiments were conducted to test the hypothesis and formed the main methods of the research study. The respondents are mainly college under graduate students. Participants were made to sit before the computer terminals and all the materials relating to the experiment were presented to them before the computer. The participants were informed about the consumer communication channels like web pages, clippings of news paper, e mail, reviews etc. The respondents were presented the restaurant review and their reactions were assessed. The respondents were told about the author of the review and a background of the author was made available to them. The review was presented to the respondents in such a manner that it was copied from an online journal having a four out of five rating at the end. This formed the persuasive message and the respondents then were asked to rate the message on a number of dimensions and measures of expectancy violation. This was the basic method adopted in the research study to test the hypothesis. The details of the experiments are discussed below
- Potential research methods
Three experiments were used in the research paper to test the proposed hypothesis.
The main objective of experiment 1 was an initial testing of the incongruity hypothesis. The effects of the source certainty and expertise were explored with the expectancy violations reported by the respondents. Persuasive messages from non experts were unexpected and surprising to the respondents on expressing certainty and similarly Persuasive messages from experts were unexpected and surprising to the respondents on expressing uncertainty. This hypothesis was effectively tested in experiment 1 by manipulating the certainty and expertise of the source. Other source perceptions were also examined as a result of this manipulation which formed the secondary objective of the experiment 1. One hundred and five undergraduates were the participants in the computer laboratory study giving monetary compensation. Four conditions were presented before the respondents varying source certainty and expertise. Experiments were conducted as detailed above in this section.
Experiment 2 is an elaboration of the initial evidence offered by Experiment 1. The experiment 2 aimed at examining the involvement and persuasion as a result of the implication of experiment 1. In Experiment 2, participants were presented a favorable restaurant review with strong arguments. The attitude of the respondents was assessed at the end of the respondent reading the restaurant review. The outcome revealed that strong arguments created more interest and persuasion. For this experiment, sixty eight under graduates were involved in a behavioral lab session for monetary compensation. The same experiment procedure was followed by altering the source certainty and expertise with strong arguments about the restaurant review.
Experiment 3 aims at extending the findings of both experiment 1 and 2 supporting the incongruity hypothesis formulated. Experiment 3 used strong and weak arguments in the persuasion message. The attitude of the respondents was assessed based on strong and weak restaurant reviews. About one hundred and forty under graduates with monetary compensation were involved in the research study. The experiment employed the same procedure as before.
- Potential respondents:
The potential respondents for the research study were college students. There were three
Experiments conducted in this research study. Experiment 1 involved One hundred five under graduates, experiment 2 involved sixty eight under graduates and experiment 3 involved about one hundred and forty under graduates. All the respondents were subjected to computer based laboratory experiment with persuasive restaurant reviews and their attitude were assessed by manipulating the source certainty and expertise. All the participants were monetarily compensated for the experiments.
- Conclusion:
The experiments conclude that attitude of the respondents vary according to the persuasive message depending on the variables of source certainty and expertise. A strong argument with a high certainty and high expertise of a restaurant review was highly influencing the respondents. Similarly a weak argument of the restaurant review created no interest among the respondent and was less influencing even though the source was certain and involved an expert. The respondents rated source certainty and expertise to be the key dimensions in influencing and evaluating a restaurant review. However, as a result of these experiments, it can be concluded that strong arguments in the restaurant review have a great persuasion and influence on the readers or respondents and can make them visit the restaurant. Hence attitude certainty is highly influenced by strong arguments with a high source certainty and expertise.
- Overall conclusion:
The research study explained the incongruity hypothesis framed through a series of three experiments. The main findings of these experiments include that strong arguments with a non expert source produced greater persuasion by expressing certainty. Similarly, strong arguments with an expert source produced greater persuasion by expressing uncertainty. However, when the arguments were weak, incongruity results, causing a reverse impact on message persuasion. In all the experiments and arguments in the research study, the incongruity hypothesis was consistent. In experiment 1, it was found that non expert source caused expectancy violation by expressing certainty and expert source caused expectancy violation by expressing uncertainty. In other words, participants felt the message unexpected and surprising when both the source certainty and expertise were incongruent to each other. Experiment 1 was also helpful in assessing other source impressions that have a persuasive impact. Experiment 2 also assessed the attitudes of the participants by presenting them a strong persuasive message in the form of a restaurant review. This experiment provided a direct assessment of the attitude of the respondents. As a result of the experiment 2, it was concluded that high expertise source created a huge interest and influence by expressing uncertainty and low expertise source created a huge interest and influence by expressing certainty. This conclusion was in alignment with the incongruity hypothesis of the research study. Experiment 3 aimed at analyzing the cognitive responses of the participants by manipulating the quality of the arguments in the persuasive message. The respondents were interested and unexpected on receiving strong arguments. Experiment 3 provided convergent support to the proposed incongruity hypothesis on an empirical basis.
The marketing implications of the research study are from an attitude certainty perspective. The major findings of the research are related to attitude assessment and form a psychological aspect. The persuasion aspect of the research forms the primary marketing activity in making people influence or create interest in buying a product or service. Message based persuasion was studied in detail in the research study attributing to consumer behavior. In marketing, consumer behavior plays a key role and understanding the consumer behavior and attitude remains the key aspect in marketing a product or service. In marketing, attitude measurements always remain the key aspect and are conducted on a regular basis to assess the consumer behavior on buying patterns to know their tastes and preferences. Attitude studies are more common in the marketing field and this research study pertains to assessing the attitude of the respondents reveals very important marketing implications. In marketing, persuasion remains the vital aspect. In this research, the message based persuasion in the form of restaurant review is analyzed with crucial variables of source certainty and source expertise. The strong message and the weak message implications are also discussed and their impact on the influencing the respondents is studied in detail in the research paper. The research paper forms a strong background for the persuasion aspect and studies the various factors and variables related to persuasion in detail. These factors and variables are altered to test the hypothesis and form a strong marketing implication with the variables being crucial to marketing. These variables can be considered for future market research considering a product or service marketing. Persuasion remains a vital aspect in marketing and every marketer must be able to persuade the target market or potential customers to market the product or service. Attitude measurement and persuasion are two important aspects of consumer behavior that form the pillars of a marketing activity. The research study discusses all these marketing aspects in detail. These are some of the marketing implications of the research study. The research study has a lot of scope in studying each variable of strong message, persuasion, source expertise, credibility etc. in detail.
Works Cited
Uma R. Karmarkar, Zakary L. Tormala. Believe Me, I Have No Idea What I’m Talking About: The Effects of Source Certainty on Consumer Involvement and Persuasion. Journal of Consumer Research. 2010
