Consumers’ Persuasion Knowledge: The Construct and Its Managerial Implications

Abstract

The paper aims to clarify the structure of the consumers’ persuasion knowledge construct and provide managerial implications addressing the link between different construct manifestations and marketing influence strategies. Using an interdisciplinary approach, the authors perform a theoretical analysis of the consumers’ persuasion knowledge construct. The proposed conceptualizations are further contrasted with the findings from the current empirical research in the area. The consumers’ persuasion knowledge is proposed to have a multidimensional structure and include affective, cognitive and conative components. The components identified during the analysis are then linked with two empirical manifestations which are marketing skepticism and marketing literacy. Based on the multidimensionality assumption, there is developed a consumer typology is designed to distinguish four ideal types of consumers with different knowledge structures. Also identified are marketing influence strategies that are claimed to have differential effectiveness in relation to different consumer types. The study contributes to the persuasion knowledge literature and reconciles the contradictory findings which exist in current research. The value of the paper is threefold. Firstly, the authors develop a structural model of the consumers’ persuasion knowledge and relate its components to different consumer coping behaviors. Secondly, a proposed conceptual typology differentiates four consumer types with different persuasion knowledge structures. Thirdly, the authors introduce the classification of marketing influence methods and determine the consumer types which are more receptive to each class of the marketing influence methods.