Level of Involvement and the Influence of Persuasive Strategies in E-commerce - A Game-Based Approach.

Research has shown that persuasive strategies are more effective in bringing about a change in attitude or behavior when they are tailored to individuals or groups of similar individuals. Several domains such as exercise and health domains use the demographic data of users to tailor influence strategies such as their age, gender, and culture. However, in domains such as e-commerce where the users’ demographic data is unknown, there is a need to identify other factors that can be used to tailor persuasive strategies. To contribute to research in this area, this work-in-progress paper investigates the use of shoppers’ level of involvement in the shopping process as a potential factor for tailoring persuasive strategies in e-commerce. We present preliminary results from a game-based study that compares the response to Cialdini's persuasive strategies for people with high and low levels of involvement. Our results suggest that people with high levels of involvement in the shopping process are influenced differently from those with low level of involvement, making level of involvement a potential trait that can be used in tailoring persuasive strategies in e-commerce. The shoppers who are highly involved in the shopping process responded to more authority messages compared to other strategies, while those with low level of involvement responded to more commitment messages than other strategies. Also, the highly involved shoppers shopped for healthier foods for themselves and a child while they shopped the least healthy for a significant other while the low involved shoppers shopped healthier for their significant other and less healthy for themselves.