Catálogo de publicaciones - libros

This research examines strategies for generating electronic referrals (eReferrals). Acquiring customers through Word of Mouth (WOM) appeals to companies because of the perceived transmitter credibility as well as low customer acquisition cost. Company-initiated eReferrals, a form of online WOM, offer marketers a way to influence customers through encouraging WOM. This research utilized a field experiment focusing on company-initiated eReferrals. Several independent variables were manipulated including incentive magnitudes for the referring party and the party being referred. The dependent variables were the number of referrals made and the number of referrals that led to sales. As expected, larger incentives increased referral rates. In addition, we found that offering the same magnitude incentive to both the referrer and referee led to a greater number of referrals. However when offer incentive magnitudes were not equitable, those with higher offers for the referrer performed better than those with a higher offer for the referee.

A lack of trust and face-to-face interaction prevents many people from purchasing online. Relevant research aimed at overcoming such problems is often based on the assumption that providing social information increases trust. These studies, however, have yielded inconsistent results, arguably because trust is usually treated as a unidimensional concept. This study targets the influence of social information on trust by taking account of the multidimensional nature of trust. Peer recommendations in product judgment tasks were hypothesized to affect consumers’ product attitudes via social trust, rather than competence, if peer images are available and uncertainty associated with products is high. Results indeed support mediation by social trust, but only for experience products.

This study examined how Web site user involvement affects perceived credibility of Web sites. The study determined the relationship between two variables: enduring involvement and situational involvement and the study measured the effect of these two independent variables and the interaction effects on the perceived credibility of Web sites. A supplemental analysis assessed whether the four groups produced by the factorial design varied with regard to the Web site element categories noticed during credibility evaluation. The research found that the interaction effect between enduring involvement and situational involvement significantly influenced perceived credibility. Additionally, the user’s focus shifted to a more central focus when situational involvement was introduced and different Web site elements were noticed.

This study compares the relative effectiveness of two different persuasive strategies embedded in the rationale of a website. The visitor is asked for his/her contact information either prior to or after having access to the guidelines for managing multimedia files offered by the site. Asking for personal data prior to access represents a reward strategy for obtaining such data. In contrast, asking for personal data after access represents a reciprocity strategy. In addition, the mediating effect of website features displaying “social proof” (such as visits counter) is explored. The analysis of the amount and type of contact information provided shows that a persuasive strategy based on reciprocity is more effective than one based on reward. Also, the presence of social proof features seems counterproductive when using a reciprocity strategy, while it seems to improve the visitors’ compliance with the request when using a reward strategy. The results are discussed in terms of adequacy of the persuasive strategy to the specific website genre.

The success of many online services today depends on the company’s ability to persuade users to take specific actions, such as registering or inviting friends. We examined over 50 popular Web services of this kind to understand the influence processes and strategies used. We found that successful online services share a pattern of target behaviors that can be viewed as part of an overall framework. We call this framework the “Behavior Chain for Online Participation.” This paper briefly presents the general idea of a and applies it to understanding persuasion patterns found online. We then illustrate the Behavior Chain for Online Participation by applying it to the Web service LinkedIn and other popular services. Future research may identify behavior chains in other domains and develop new research methods for validating behavior chains.

This study presents , and how they can be used to explore the persuasive potential of real embodied conversational agents. Utilizing a novel Wizard-of-Oz style approach and a direct measure of behavior change we explore whether ‘ideal’ embodied conversational agents have a similar persuasive impact as real people, and demonstrate the importance of visually perceiving for embodied conversational agents to be persuasive.

Anchored in social agency theory, recent research has emphasized the importance of anthropomorphic interface agents’ voice to impact learning-related outcomes. Nevertheless, literature on human social models suggests that the appearance of an interface agent may have important implications for its ability to influence attitudes and self-efficacy. Therefore, we hypothesized that visual presence of the interface agent would result in more positive attitudes toward engineering and greater self-efficacy than the presence of a human voice alone. In accordance to our hypothesis, results revealed that participants who interacted with the visible agents reported significantly greater utility for engineering, greater self-efficacy, and greater interest in engineering related fields than those who interacted with a human voice. Thus, the current work indicates the importance of anthropomorphic agent’s visibility in changing attitudes and beliefs.

Embodied virtual agents (called hereafter EVAs) are animated, virtual objects, which move, talk, and look like human beings. We propose a possible route which may help better understand how observed effects of an agent on an interface user occur. We relate the concept of embodied agent to literatures in marketing and psychology, which justify the introduction of the concept of attitude. A route of influence and a model are elaborated, proposing effects of agents presence and congruency, on attitudes, and behavioural and intentional dimension of the website power of retention, or “stickiness”. The model is tested, results are discussed, research contributions and limits are commented.

In a persuasive communication, not only the message but also the source of the message can influence the persuasibility of the audience. This paper investigates whether displaying a static image of the source can affect the perceived credibility of a message that aims to promote regular exercise. We find a clear influence of the source’s appearance on the source’s credibility and that this effect is topic dependent. We also explore how the perceived source’s credibility for a particular topic correlates with the perceived credibility of a message on that topic.

The advent of digital television technologies will rapidly expand viewer interaction with computer-mediated television. This paper reports on research demonstrating how new computer-mediated TV advertising models, including iTV microsites and telescopic ads, are superior to their linear counterparts. The authors argue that, in part, such superiority may result from the degree to which interactivity heightens mental engagement (facilitating a shift from peripheral to central message processing) and empowers viewer choice, thereby positively predisposing viewers to the persuasive content they encounter. The authors warn of potential negative fallout, however, where viewer expectations are not met. Although there might be potential ‘distraction’ effects associated with processing both video and interactive layered content, testing among college students demonstrated no adverse effects associated with such concurrent message processing. The opportunities associated with further research in this new arena of captology are explored.