Evidence-based advertising: an application to persuasion

Complex phenomena such as advertising are difficult to understand. As a result, extensive and repeated testing of diverse alternative reasonable hypotheses is necessary in order to increase knowledge about advertising.

Evidence-based advertising: an application to persuasion

J. Scott Armstrong

University of Pennsylvania

This paper is concerned with only one aspect of advertising – that being persuasion. I use a broad common-sense definition of persuasive advertising: it is the attempt to use primarily one-way communication to influence attitudes and beliefs. And by influence, I mean to either change or maintain attitudes and behaviour.

Most of the ideas about how to persuade others are due to the efforts of thousands of advertisers and others in the persuasion business who developed and implemented creative approaches. Starting in the early 1900s, advertisers began to...

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