Question

Consider a consumer who is contemplating a new automobile purchase. She has narrowed her decision down to two brands, Brand X and Brand Y. She has identified gas mileage, price, warranty, and styling to be important attributes to consider in her decision. Her evaluative ratings (e) for each attribute and her beliefs of how each brand performs on a given attribute (b) are given below: ​ Brand X Brand Y Attribute e b b Mileage 2 6 4 Low Price 3 2 2 Warranty -1 1 3 Design 1 10 5 Refer to the Automobile Scenario. The consumer comes across an advertisement that shows Brand X stating that its automobile is being offered as an environment-friendly hybrid model. According to the elaboration likelihood model (ELM), this consumer is most likely to be influenced by the _____. a. unit route to persuasion b. central route to persuasion c. sentiment route to persuasion d. secondary route to persuasion e. peripheral route to persuasion

Answer 1

Answer:

e. peripheral route to persuasion

Explanation:

In order to determine which route to persuasion the car company is using, we must first analyze the customer:

Is the customer motivated to purchase a new car, is he/she thinking and analyzing about buying a new car? ⇒ in this case the answer is yes, so this implies that a central route should be more persuasive. The peripheral route is more effective when convincing passive audiences or consumers.

Is the customer really evaluating the message, or is she just contemplating the ad? ⇒ again in this case, the customer is paying attention to the core message, but will it be able to persuade her?

Is this ad able to persuade the customer and his/her attitude towards the car, is this attribute really important to the customer?  ⇒ this is the most important aspect of the message, and to be honest, the customer didn't pay much attention to environmental issues, so she is probably not going to be persuaded by it. She might say yes, brand X is offering a green car, but she will not value that fact. For this particular customer, this ad represents a peripheral route to persuasion. For this particular customer, a central route would imply a message about the car's design, warranty, price, or mileage.  

The same ad can work differently for other consumers. E.g. a person that is seeking to buy a new car and really values the fact that the car pollutes less, will pay a lot of attention to this ad and will be probably persuaded by it. For this consumer, this ad would follow a central route, not a peripheral route.