Persuasion: The Elaboration Likelihood Model Of Amazon

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1. ELABORATION LIKELIHOOD MODEL (PETTY, J.T., CACIOPPO, R.E., 1986) In today’s society, people are often bombarded with various messages by the mass media, many of which, attempt to persuade them of certain ideas. The Elaboration Likelihood Model (ELM) is a model of persuasion that attempts to explain how attitude change or resistance are shaped, formed, or reinforced by persuasive arguments over time. It suggests that persuasion takes place when people express either a high or low degree of elaboration, which determines the route towards attitude change – central route or peripheral route. 2. THE AMAZON.COM USER INTERFACE Amazon.com is an international e-commerce site, retailing products ranging from electronics to food, toys, jewelry, and …show more content…

Despite the latter’s lack of motivation and ability, both groups can be successfully taken closer to the point of sale either through the central or peripheral route. This is because Amazon clearly understands their different target audiences, as well as what motivates and persuades them, of which are displayed through the content, visual layout, navigation and delivery of its web front. 3. APPLYING ELM TO AMAZON.COM To illustrate Amazon’s brilliant use of ELM, an example of a potential customer from each of the 2 groups will be imagined taking on the central and peripheral route respectively. …show more content…

4. ADVANTAGES AND LIMITATIONS With the ELM, a complex web of variables, the nature of an individual’s thought processes to external information has been well highlighted, allowing an understanding as to why Amazon’s web interface was a success, consequently enabling the replication of the same concept to other web designs to achieve similar success. However, given the limited scope of this paper, the primary focus was only on variables that were expected to have a positive impact on users. Yet, there may be negative influences of peripheral cues like negative customer reviews or delayed web page loading time, which exerts negative influence on user behaviour that were not covered in this paper. 5. CONCLUSION In conclusion, Amazon has proven to well-operationalize ELM into its website, incorporating general elements such as content and visual layout, successfully attracting and persuading both motivated and even not-so-motivated users closer towards the point of

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