Blog# 6- Victoria's Secret and the Peripheral Route to Persuasion

I believe that I am not entirely susceptible to advertisements, and often try to ignore TV and print ads encouraging me to waste my money on unnecessary products. However, I admittedly have fallen prey to advertising in the past, and often times have not been conscious of it until much later. Advertising relies on the social psychological concept of Persuasion, meaning the way that attitudes are altered (Hovland, Lumsdaine & Sheffield, 1949; Hovland, Janis, & Kelley, 1953), and attempts to draw the consumer in with the two routes to persuasion. The Central Route to Persuasion is when a person is influenced by the strength of an argument and amount of information (Petty and Cacioppo, 1986), and The Peripheral Route to Persuasion is when a person is influenced not by information but by cues outside the message, such as celebrity (Petty and Caciopp, 1986). I often fall into the peripheral route to persuasion, because I am a cognitive miser, and tend to ignore large amounts of gratuitous information. Because I usually take the peripheral route to persuasion, simple magazine and television advertisements generally have the most influence on me. In particular, I recall being drawn to the Victoria’s Secret advertisements in magazines such as Glamour, Vogue and Cosmopolitan. They are not based on a complicated message or paragraphs of convincing text about their superior bra technology. The company relies merely on the sex appeal of their models, and the shock-value of their now-famous fashion show to draw women and men alike to buy their products. I have shamefully bought into their advertisements and gladly scooped up their coupons in magazines and gone on expensive shopping sprees to their stores. Although all I got with the coupon was a free cotton piece of fabric a few inches wide, I was somehow convinced that using that coupon justified the discount I would get on another incredibly overpriced bra. I spent unreasonable amounts of money on trivial items, somewhat because supermodel Giselle Bundchen slapped on the undergarments and said they were the best. Additionally, the “Pink” store in Victoria’s Secret was created to lure teens into the stores and have them spend $40 on cotton pajama pants with the “Pink” name emblazoned on the sides and bottom. Unfortunately, I was one of the many who justified the price inflation partially because I liked the images in the print advertisements. Due to my needless expenditures at Victoria’s Secret, I can reluctantly admit that the lure of celebrity in advertisements leads me to follow the peripheral route, rather than to pay attention to strong arguments and follow the central route. Although I do sometimes follow the central route in more important matters, such as political decisions, I am one of the millions whom advertisers easily draws in with little meaningful information. With the realization that the advertisers are deliberately using these celebrities to take money from my pockets, I plan on being much more cautious when being persuaded in any capacity.

References

Hovland, C. I., Janis, I. L., & Kelley, H. H. (1953) Communication and persuasion: Psychological studies of opinion change. New Haven, CT: Yale University Press.

Hovland, C.I., Lumsdaine, A. A., & Sheffield, F. D. (1949). Experiments on mass communication. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press.

Petty, R. E., & Cacippo, J. T. (1986). Communication and persuasion: Central and peripheral routes to attitude change. New York: Springer-Verlag.