ABSTRACT
The first problem to be addressed is that of whether verbal communication can actually affect people's opinions, attitudes and behaviour. Now in many ways substantial evidence for this assertion was provided in Chapter 2, at both a theoretical and empirical level. It will be remembered that the conclusion reached was that a significant role for interpersonal communication was necessary in order to account for the observed shape of the adoption curves. Therefore in this section only complementary evidence will be cited, that is evidence gained by different, and independent, methodologies. In the main, studies from the field of marketing will be utilised, since it is an unfortunate fact that, for instance, communication researchers have concentrated on printed rather than verbal messages, and on artificial laboratory situations rather than the real world. Only a few relevant studies are to be found in the areas of communication and social psychology. Furthermore, whatever the academic origin of these studies, they have also tended to be conducted at one point in time, and therefore present a static picture of what is after all a dynamic process. This is perhaps the most damaging criticism of all, and one which will be raised again later in this chapter, and in Chapter 5.' We now turn to the evidence.
