ABSTRACT
One utility of advertising conforms to the direct relationship between a receiver viewing an advertising message and buying the brand (Thorson & Rodgers, Chapter 1). The receiver of a message is often referred to as the target, and the messages are designed and placed by advertising executive agents to “hit” the target. Such metaphorical language implies a “game” between the message sender and the target. In most persuasion “games,” the direct effect of advertising on purchase behavior is demonstrated; however, there are cases when it is not. For example, if target consumers are suspicious about the persuasion tactics-e.g., “I think Company X is using a celebrity, who probably doesn’t even use the product, just to get me to buy that shampoo”—they may reject the advertising and the product. In persuasion games, like other games, one goal is to figure out what the other player knows or how s/he operates and then adjust individual game-play actions accordingly. Such reflexive knowledge is captured in the Persuasion Knowledge Model (PKM) (Friestad & Wright, 1994), a theoretical framework that describes ramifications of agent’s and target’s “everyday persuasion knowledge” for persuasion episodes, including advertising. Everyday persuasion knowledge for targets relates to their ideas about how advertising persuades or the specific tactics used (e.g., “they use good-looking people in an ad to make me want to imitate them”). Everyday persuasion knowledge for agents may relate to the way that they think targets will respond (e.g., “consumers like celebrities, so if we place this shampoo with this celebrity, they will like the brand, too”). It is likely that these sorts of ideas influence advertising persuasion. Yet, few advertising theories allow for the influence of “everyday market knowledge” on advertising effects. As such, our chapter contributes to advertising theory by highlighting the role that targets’ knowledge about persuasion (and to a lesser extent, agents’ knowledge) plays in interpreting and responding to persuasion attempts. Pertinent to the advertising model proposed in Figure 1.1, we review literature related to receivers’ beliefs about and understanding of the message (in traditional and non-traditional advertising contexts). We first
outline the components of the PKM, then present studies that investigate these components, and finally, we provide discussion on PKM processing and persuasion outcomes.
