Oct. 27, 1997 Contact Pauline Austin (541) 346-3129 EUGENE--American consumers may be more savvy than marketers and advertisers think, according to two acclaimed University of Oregon researchers. UO marketing experts Marian Friestad and Peter Wright surveyed 300 people to find out what both consumers and experts think about the techniques marketers, salesmen and advertisers use to persuade. The study results challenge the idea that consumers are either blank slates waiting to absorb persuasive messages, or antagonists who don't believe anything advertisers tell them, say Friestad and Wright, marketing professors at the UO Charles H. Lundquist College of Business. "Our research shows that consumers are smarter than that--they realize persuasion is a game played by the persuader and the customer," explains Friestad. "Most people don't mind being the target of a persuasion attempt as long as the persuaders play fair. Consumers don't like it when the persuaders resort to tactics they consider manipulative." Friestad says ads for and against the assisted death measure now before Oregon voters are examples of how a particular tactic--a strong appeal to emotion--may offend that sense of fair play. "Consumers aren't dummies. They continually learn and become more sophisticated about advertising. They don't change their minds about issues solely because of heavy-handed appeals to emotion," Friestad contends. According to Wright, the research holds important implications for both marketers and consumers. He says consumers need to know more about the methods persuaders use in order to make intelligent choices about which products to buy or which candidate to vote for. He says it's equally important for marketers to understand why some messages work when others don't. "The knowledge and beliefs that both sides have are critical to understanding how persuasion works in a free and open society," he says. The study, which was reported in the Journal of Consumer Research in 1995, grew out of a 1994 article Friestad and Wright wrote for the same journal on how people form their beliefs about how persuasion works. That article discussed how consumers' beliefs could determine the effectiveness of an advertiser's or salesperson's attempt to persuade. Editors of the journal, a publication of the Association for Consumer Reseach, recently named the paper the best article to appear in its 1994 publication year. -30- #F-6020/Local, Lcl Bus,OrD/Bus,OrBus,PDX,PDX/Spcl,SBUS