Are we persuading them?

Persuasion implies preference change. Does a given ad, marketing message, value proposition, packaging design, or branding decision cause people to change their minds?

Persuasion is generally seen as a conscious rather than pre-conscious cognitive process.  It is associated with rational argument and evidence, received and evaluated consciously. But pre-conscious factors play a role in persuasion as well, and often contribute to preference change more than rational argument or evidence.

Problems with traditional approaches

Traditional approaches to measuring persuasion suffer from their reliance on self-reporting. Rather than directly measuring the behavioral consequences of persuasion attempts, they ask consumers to report whether or not they were persuaded. There are many reasons why consumers may not answer truthfully, and even if they do, actual behaviors may differ from stated preferences due to influences operating below the threshold of conscious awareness.

Traditional approaches provide no direct insights into why persuasion attempts fail or succeed. At best, they tell us whether a person believes they have been persuaded, which may or may not correlate with actual preference and behavior change.

Actionable results with Lucid Neurometrics

Lucid Neurometrics can measure not only the results of persuasion attempts, but the individual elements that contribute to successful or unsuccessful persuasion. For example:

• Did the persuasion attempt activate an anticipation of reward?
• Was the persuasion attempt congruent with the person's prior product or brand conceptions?
• Was there a disjunction between a persuasion effect and an enjoyment effect?

These elements can be measured directly using both brain and physiological metrics.

In addition, well-crafted experiments can help advertisers and marketers measure the strength of "background persuaders" like brand, product, and company associations that can facilitate or hinder persuasion attempts without being explicitly present in the persuasive message.