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Shawn Chowdhury Professor Pa HerFinal Project 5/03/2014T-Mobile Power Of Persuasion.The subject of my research paper will be based on a number of different experiments conducted to prove the persuasion of marketing. My demographic are Families, interested in a T-Mobile service. The theories/principles I will use are Reciprocation; Social Proof; Commitment and consistency; Liking; Authority and scarcity. Each of which will have supporting experiments proving its theory. These are subjects I will dwell into as we travel further throughout the research paper. My focus will be how I can apply my principles to Families using marketing techniques. I’ve chosen Families to be my subject/participants because families are initially the focus of t-mobile itself. I believe my application of such methods of persuasion will work because my supporting researched experiments.T-Mobile has always been a company designing hundreds of different types of affordable family rate plans. These family plans have now been replaced and are what we like to call grandfathered, by a single new family plan called simple choice. Grandfathered plans only exist to customers who have not upgraded to simple choice yet. Those plans usually consisted of a capped limited to minutes used or text messages with variable data set along a price point. Now replaced by simple choice a plan that includes unlimited talk and Text with upgradable data with no overages, our now most cost efficient plan yet. The more people added to a plan, the lower the price will get for each line. T-mobile has even taken in addition to simple choice plans are the features. Features such as International calling, insurance and our biggest focus yet, the Family Allowance feature. The Family allowance feature is designed to let you easily manage the minutes, messages, and downloads for all lines on your account. You can set Always Allowed numbers to enable unlimited calling or texting and Never Allowed numbers to restrict calling or texting. You can also block usage during certain times of day. Parents grow more concerned about the children’s whereabouts more and more every day. Until eventually realizing its time to give their child a phone, in case for emergencies or to call a parent. This also applies to tablets with applications designed for children. However parents often regret it because the phones will sometimes end up being used for alternative purposes instead; such as inappropriate online usage, or calling boy/girlfriends of parents who do not approve of. Now with family allowance, the parent can monitor their child’s behavior. And limit their internet usage. Now this is very important because the parent can now reward a child with good behavior by increasing the data allowed or punish by decreasing ones usage without physically removing the phone from the child or teenagers hands. This is called Operant Conditioning, a method of learning that occurs through rewards and punishments for ones behavior. This creates an association between behavior and the consequence for ones behavior. Another term for this is known as cause and effect. Getting the word out is where I come in. It is up to my efforts to make aware to customers the features and opportunities T-Mobile has to offer apart from our great 4G-LTE speeds. How I use the six theories/principles will now come into play. Beginning with how a parent is greeted by give a name, get a name. Initially Welcoming the parent to the store and continuing further on towards to the reason for their visit. Eighty percent of the time a customer/parent will come in for a technical issue and will be giving the same amount of respect to a customer coming in to buy a product because it is all about the valued experience. This allows a customer to maintain their commitment to t-mobile. However the other twenty percent who come in to buy a product will usually be lead down a path where the parent and sales representative begin a sort of relationship. In retrospect the sales rep is simply doing their job by simply applying the six principles; Reciprocation; Social Proof; Commitment and consistency; Liking; Authority and scarcity, not necessarily in that order. The Six Major Principles are very important in the process of persuasion when it comes to guiding the parent or family in the right direction, making them feel secure and safe to invest their money towards a better service. Reciprocation supports the concept of “give and you will receive” people feel indebted to individuals who do something for them. An experiment conducted in 2005 to evaluate how many people would respond to a marketing survey. He sent one-third of the surveys to the focus group a handwritten sticky note asking them to complete the survey. Another one-third were sent a blank posted note and the last one-third was not sent anything. The results came back at 69% response rate for the hand written note; 43% for the blank note and 34% response rate for those without a note. (Randy G. (2004). Post-it Note Persuasion: A Sticky Influence, journal of consumer psychology, pp 230-237) Clearly showing that as a sales rep, creating a positive energy in the environment and invest a personal connection with the parent will bring me one step closer to creating a relationship.Another experiment has been done to support the concept of social proofing. This means people will often look to others when making a decision. The A room with a view point experiment was published in 2008. The experiment was based on which types of signs would most encourage Arizona hotel visitors to reuse towels. They tested four types of signs. The finding in this expirement resulted in more residents reusing their towels while staying in the same hotels. It was sign 4 which said the majority of guests reused their towels at least once during their stay. Goldstein N. J., Cialdini R. B., Griskevicius V.(2008) A Room with a Viewpoint: Using Social Norms to Motivate Environmental Conservation in Hotels.In 1974 Stanley Milgram conducted an experiment called the The role of personality, situations, and Their Interactions. Where volunteers would shock their "victim's" with a voltage increasing at 15 volts in intensity each ti.e the "victim" answered the questions incorrectly" the participants were the target in this expirement. The people wearing white coats represented authority. For as long as the authority group asked the target group to continue increasing the voltage they complied. Blass T. (1991). Understanding Behavior in the Milgram Obedience Experiment: The role of personality, situations, and Their Interactions.Journal of Personality and Social Psychology Vol. 60, No 3. Pp 398-413Simply by welcoming a parent to the store, they experience a sense of Reciprocation. Which will set a very positive environment right from the beginning. We ask the parent about their needs and values, what they do on a day to day basis, and if they enjoy their jobs if and how many children they have and how old their children are. I’m naturally curious about human nature and how people live however by such question I’m able to provide a sense of “liking”. According to Cialdini “People prefer to say ‘yes’ to those they know and like,” so by becoming more knowledgeable about the father or mothers prospects and existing preferences I’m given the upper hand on determining how to improve my sale while it’s in progress. After creating a sense of Liking and Reciprocation. Social Proofing will come into play. More often than not T-Mobile employees will bring other parents into the conversation to ask them whether they enjoy the service or not. Without really knowing the outcome I have full confidence that the service is indeed good simply based on the positive environment previously created. This will make the parent more confident throughout the progression to getting their service. However sometimes an older parent will come into the store uninterested in the service wanting to be convinced. So the theory Commitment and Consistency will come in play. By praising them for making good past decision. Then following up with different ways to stress consistent values connecting old previously made actions and purchases with values underlying new actions and/or purchases made today. We can persuade older parents to get the service. Now the last thing we use always and most often is the Scarcity theory. Whenever we are near the end of a sale we always describe which items are nearly sold out. This also applies to Promotional sales as well. By doing so this will create a supply and demand and will make the parent feels like he or she must get the particular phone or plan/promotion. References:Cialdini, R. B., Bator R. J. (2000) The Application of Persuasion Theory to the Development Of Effective Proenvironmental Public Service Announcements. Peer Reviewed journal of Social Issues, Vol. 56 No. 3, pp 527-541Link: G. (2004). Post-it Note Persuasion: A Sticky Influence, journal of consumer psychology, pp 230-237Link: Goldstein N. J., Cialdini R. B., Griskevicius V.(2008) A Room with a Viewpoint: Using Social Norms to Motivate Environmental Conservation in Hotels Journal of Consumer Research Vol. 35, No. 3Link: Blass T. (1991). Understanding Behavior in the Milgram Obedience Experiment: The role of personality, situations, and Their Interactions.Journal of Personality and Social Psychology Vol. 60, No 3. Pp 398-413Link: My reference ................
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