Heuristics: Clinical Trial and Product
Persuasive Heuristics Lead to Successful Business Heuristics is known as methods or strategies used in the commercial industry in attracting consumer’s attention in order to achieve successful business transactions. These significant techniques are vastly seen in daily newspapers, magazines and media channels. Most advertisements portray colourful, attractive background carrying intuitive messages with the intention of captivating potential buyers. Heuristics mainly influences the consumer’s audio visual perceptions which later impinge on his or her emotion. Where the heuristic process could positively convinces and influences one’s attitude and perception, the upcoming behaviour or response could potentially lead to compliance and commitment. To properly identify and review various types of commonly applied heuristics, a weight loss advertisement was abstracted from the Today’s Newspaper dated Wednesday, 2nd May 2012. The target group of the advert is primarily male and female consumers struggling with overeating issues, obesity and overweight body mass index (BMI) problems that potentially threaten one’s self-esteem. Chaiken (1987), Petty and Cacioppo (1989), as cited by Smith and Mackie (2007) argued that information processing occurs in different manners and manifests in the form of superficial processing and systematic processing. The superficial information process relies greatly on the prominence of the stated information in stimulating positive feedback, and less attention is placed unto the message’s content. On the contrary, the systematic processing engages thoughtful and thorough evaluation of information. For the current advertisement analysis, readers rely more on accessible information, therefore the focus is placed on superficial information processing. Two components of information contributing to attitude changes are distinguished in this advertisement: the cognitive information and the emotion affect. The cognitive
References: Abdul Khamid, H. M. (2010, November). Singaporeans getting fatter. Channelnesasia.com. Retrieved from http://www.channelnewsasia.com/stories/singaporelocalnews/view/1091906/1.html Slovic, P., Finucane, M., Peters, E., & MacGregor, D. G. (2003). The Affect Heuristic. Retrieved from http://people.usd.edu/~xtwang/DM(GuangHua)/Readings(GuangHua)/AffectHeuristic.pdf Smith, E. R., & Mackie, D. M. (2007). Social Psychology (3rd ed.). New York: Psychology Press.