Work Experience whilst at university saw me working for Springetts – an international award winning, independent brand and packaging design consultancy, based in London.

“…for today’s consumers, community-by-brand-association is not enough. Now, before, during and after purchase, consumers are engaging directly with each other through blogs, ratings and reviews, tagging and other interactive forums. They’re sharing opinions, riffing off each other’s creativity and seizing control of the messages and values that brands once generated and propogated.” p18-19

“These peer-to-peer digital communications have begun to upstage brands as the gateway to covered membership in communities – however abstract or ephemeral. For brands to survive this relationship shift, this digital displacement, they need to engage the tribal tendencies online consumers on their own turf. Brands have to support those communities that have the closest affinity with them – and create some of their own.” p18-19

“For the last thirty years or so, brilliantly controlled brand management was the perfect approach for persuading a mass market…who willingly – even eagerly – put their faith in brands…While some of today’s top brands continue to succeed…-sealed off from rising consumer influence-it’s only a matter of time before chinks of cultural obsolescence appear in their armor. This will made brands vulnerable to waves of pressure…” p19

“The closed brand will be overwhelmed by passionate, powerful consumer who wants her brands open – or not at all.” p19

“1997…Burton Snowboards launched an online initiative to enable customers to upload and share photos and engage in threaded discussions…a powerful credibility booster for the brand.” p22-23

“Now all brands are expected to provide…opportunities for consumers to exchange ideas and be both seen and heard.” p23

“The open brand is an avid advocate of consumer participation – of leveraging the power of communities and networks – and enables the consumer to influence the brand and co-create its future.” p24

“The successful open brand will operate under a new set of assumptions, including that the consumer will gladly ask for what she wants, engage in an ongoing dialogue and frequently share her opinions about brands with the online public. And that the brand must engage the consumer through transparent commmunication, trust consumer to co-create the brand message and learn to be guided by impassionate amateurs.”

“A.G.Lafley, CEO of Proder and Gramble…Consumers are beginning in a very real sense to own our brands and participate in their creation. We need to learn to let go.” p24

On-Demand
“…they want it – and often get it – ‘right now’ – instant gratification.” p31

Personal
” – building relationships with constant consumer dialogue…bring the brand closer to each consumer’s real-time needs, want and expectations.” p33

Engaging
“Interactivity is key to deepening consumers’ emotional connection with a brand…” p35

“A well-designed website with interactive content can invite more consumer dialogue.” p38

“Three revolutionary and related online behaviours…”
Creating
Sharing
Influencing – the ability to affect other people’s attitudes and actions

“”85-90 percent of online consumersacquire enough digital avvy – through searching, surfing, reading, etc. – to become reliable ‘experts’ to friends and family. They information they store, even within their relatively small spheres of influence, can significantly influence purchase decisions.” p55

Can I do something with this?

“What is beyond debate is this: the digital behaviours of creating, sharing and influencing have altered consumers’ expectations of brands.” p55

“The Resource Interactive 2007 iCitizen Motivational Study showed that 86% if the U.S. online population or roughly 200 million people (Internet Usage and World Population Statistics for June 30, 2007) are creating, sharing and influencing. p55

“…all icitizens are uniquely passionate and transparent about their expertise…Their notoriety achieves critical mass, and their influence gains momentum and reach in a way that is particular to the web.” p64

“…elite icitizens, whose more widespread influence reaches people not known to the cultural change – motivated or celebrity-seeking icitizen. Because of the trust and familiarity existing between everyday iCitizens and their close-knit networks, they are best leveraged for driving trial and purchase. Elite icitizens can be used to build awareness of a brand.” p64-65

“The growth of trust in a peer network is tied to waning trust in traditional cultural authorities and institutions – the Church and State, educators and, yes, brands and the mass media. Consumers are less trusting because they’re jaded by everything from lackluster customer service and brand blandness.” p81

“…52 percent of adult consumers typing queries into search engines are doin gso to make or influence routine purchase decisions.” p82

“All consumers are 50 percent more likely to be influenced by word-of-mouth recommendations from their peers than by radio or TV ads, according to a Nielson Buzzmetrics 2005 report. Why? Because trust is now in the network – in groups of interconnected ‘people like me.’ p82

“…opinions have more legitmacy if we believe they are based on personal experience or the desire to help others through sharing, rather than on the tactics of corporate persuasion…Those ‘boased’ opinions acquire even greater legitmacy if they’re grouped with other similar ones or constitute a rating system of popularity or reliability…trustworthiness…” p83

“…to make acceptable bias work in a brand’s favor is simple: enable and foster dialogue about your brand and products without seeming to influence, interfere with or manipulate it. Give iCitizens a forum, a gathering place, a community of their own.” p83

“…research suggests that media have only a limited influence on us.” p56

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Psychological Aspects of Cyberspace. Theory, Research, Applications. 2008. Edited by Azy Barak. New York: Cambridge University Press

“Traditional studies of uses and gratifications used five clusters of needs that media could fulfll: cognitive, affective, personal integrative, social integrative, and diversion needs (Rulsin, 1986)…

1. Cognitive needs represent the intrinsic desire for information acquisition, knowledge and understanding.

2. Affective needs related to emotional experiences and intrinisic desire for pleasure, entertainment, and aesthetics.

3. Personal Integrative needs that derive from individuals’ desire to appear credible, be perceived as confident, and have high self esteem.

4. Social Integrative needs are affiliation needs where the individual wants to be part of a group to have a sense of belonging

5. Diversion needs, which relate to the need for escape and diversion from a problem and routines.” p254

Trust. What is Trust?

“…trust is critical when there is a degree of uncertainty (Mayer, Davis and Schoorman, 1995). This uncertainty also needs to contain an element of risk (Deutsch, 1962). Without any risk, or vulnerability, there is no need for trust (Mayer et al., 1995).” p19

This statement is very important in my studies and something to consider and refer to as I continue through.

In this book they believe that three components are needed for trust to take heed. p19

“Ability – refers to the knowledge, skills, and competence of the person trusted to conduct the expected actions.”
Example: information can be taken without revealing it to all.

“Integrity – refers to the belief that the person or institution will act in an honest, reliable, and credible manner.”

“Benevolence – refers to ‘the extent to which a trustee is believed to intend doing good to the trustor.’ (Bhattacherjee, 2002. p219)”

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Trust and the Internet
- Building Trust Online

“Researchers have found that on the Internet individuals go about reducing uncertainty by asking more direct, probing questions (Tidwell + Walther, 2002).” p21

“The use of profiles, and particularly photographs, is also designed to increase the level of trust at an interpersonal level (Tanis + Postmes, 2007; Whitty + Carr. 2006).” p21

“People also use linguistic cues to convey trustworthiness.” Galegher et al (1998) conducted some experiments to “…look for clues about how their members established legitimacy and credibility…They posted messages appropriate to the group, and use of snappy headers to make themselves ‘heard’…posters refer to their own membership of the…group, or how long they have lurked for before asking a question/replying to one.” p21

“Within pseudonymous environments, reputation systems also provide an important marker for trustworthiness (Resnick, Kuwabara, Zeckhauser, & Friedman, 2000)…Resnick and Zeckerhauser (2001) studied the eBay reputation system and reported back that feedback given did seem to predict the sellers’ future success, including the chances that their good would be bought.” p21

With my investigations last year and planned studies for this module as these systems have influence on actions of others can similar influencial components be used in the design to influence further?

“…reputation systems have spread, such that is now common to find community systems with rankings for members based on (amoung others) longevity, number of postings, and (for the highest ranks) a form of peer review. The ability to ‘Digg’ or ‘Bury’ stories acts as a form of community-derived trust building. Many of the blog commenting systems for reader rating comments, and the hiding of poorly ranked comments.” p21-22

“Another development has been the use of web-based seals, for example TRUSTe…These seals are a visible way to reassure customers that online businesses respect an individual’s privacy on the Internet and are designered to enable customers to ‘buy online with confidence’ (Trust UK).” p22

“Liu, Marchewka, Lu, and Yu (2005) fuond that the levels of trust can be increased by integrating a comprehensive privacy policy in to the desig of a…website…” p22

“However, much research (e.g. Tsai, Cranor. Acquisti, & Fong, 2006) has found that although the majority of users tend to notice the presence of privacy policies, they rarely read them.” p22

“…using a mock commercial website, Metzger (2006) found that it is the reputation of the company that is important in influencing trust and disclosure of personal information online, not privacy assurances.” p22

Opportunity – creation of a mock website to test from

“Boyd (2003) who hypothesizes that trust online is built through rhetorical devices such as providing descriptions of websites credentials and competencies, display customer feedback, records of past security performance, and offering simple and clear assessments of risk to potential customers.” p22

In addition to this I do believe that use of security symbols such as padlocks, and other security signs can be more than sufficient to build the trust for the user on their journey.

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Measuring Trust

“Measures of trust tend to be specific to individual studies.” p23

“In the tradition sense, mediation refers to the effect of an independent variable on a dependent variable being explained by common links to a third variable. The reported results would therefore suggest that privacy has no direct effect on behavior; instead, any effect could be explained by the links between privacy and trust and between trust and behaviour.” p24

This third variable could be any of the components I found in the my analysis conducted in previous my previous study such as the use of emoticons, or friendly punctuation, or use of directive persuasive personalisation. Any of these could have an impact on the levels of trust that are transferred between individuals or institutions.

“There are a number of steps that can be taken to…enable the development of trust…” p25-26

“…trust needs to be built in to the design of Internet services, either through enabling of trust building activities or the use of trust cues and mechanisms.” p25-26

“…we have seen that trust can be encouraged by allowing users time to exchange soci-emotional messages, rather than forcing them to focus only on task-based communication.” p26

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Influences on the Nature and Functioning of Online Groups by Karelyn Y. A. McKenna

“Spears et al (2002) have argued that anonymous communication within groups leads to a sense of depersonalisation by the group members…when members feel an absence of personal accountability and personal identity then the group-level becomes more important…The degree to which the group identity is salient, however, plays an important role in determining what the effects of anonymity will be on the development and influence of group norms.” p235

“An intermediate level of conformity to group norms was evinced whether group salience was high or low for those participants who interacted under individual conditions.” p236

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“Many other websites, particularly many user forums, news sites, and music sites, begin to display statistics on certain user behaviors (‘This story has been read 268 times’) or even dynamically adjust their layout by reserving certain attractive spots for frequently viewed, commented, downloaded, or linked items.” p274-275

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Truth, Lies and Trust on the Internet by Monica T. Whitty and Adam N. Joinson 2009: Routledge: UK

Considerations:
- Effects on influence with or without rich media ie., pictures, audio or video (live streaming) p20
- Positive and negative socio-emotional messages p21
- Aggressive communication in online environments – ‘flaming’ or trolls p22

“…trust has a number of dimensions, including the competence, reputation and intentions (benevolent or malevolent) of the research organisation. People’s initial interpretation of the trustworthiness of a website tends to be made very quickly using design-based heuristics (Sillence et all, 2006), including inappropriate name for the website, a messy layout and the inclusion of adverts (Sillence et al, 2006).” p47-48

“Johnson et al (in press) compared self-disclosure to trustworthy and untrustworthy site. The untrustworthy site was hosted on a fake domain (www.surveylance.net) and included adverts, spelling mistakes and HTML coding errors. Perhaps not surprisingly, self-disclosure was significantly higher to the trustworthy questionnaire.” p48

“Fox and Schwartz (2002)…Control was introduced into the procedure by allowing participants choice as to the type of questions they wanted to answer, allowing movement through the questions to change or check their responses and providing sample questions to inform their choice. Participants given increased control also rated the test more positively than those with no control. They had more trust in the research, were less anxious and said that they were likely to respond with more candour…In the condition with weakened control – where participants were given a short time to answer each question, and could not move back to previous items – impression management was reduced.” p49

Ethical considerations from offline that can be considered online (p49-50) could be:
-informed consent
-withdrawal consent
-confidentiality
-debriefing

“…given the need to establish trust, it would seem that organisations with an existing reputation are at an advantage…increased size and reputation led to higher trust, which in turn influenced the perception of risk and the willingness to buy.” p105

How people assess trust in sites…p105-106

“Sillence et al (2006) argue for a three stage model for understanding how people access the trustworthiness of a website. Stage one assumes that people are faced with a number of potential websites, and thus engage in a rapid, heuristic-based analysis on the design of the site rather than the content. At the second stage, people engage in a more systematic analysis of the content of the site, during which time they are influenced by the apparent integrity, benevolence and expertise demonstrated (Bhattacherjee, 2002). Stage three is a relationship development and integration stage: that is, a person’s continued use of a site, personalisation and integration of experience.”

“A critical part of the first stage of assessing trustworthiness relies on the design of the website (Sillence et al 2006).” p106

“Lindgaard et al (2006) found that people can judge the visual attractiveness of a website in 50 milliseconds.” p106

“There has been a number of studies that have identified the critical design elements during this early stage (e.g. Briggs etc all. 2002; Egger. 2000; Fogg et al. 2001; Stanford et al. 2002; Wang and Emurian 2005). Some of the elements found in trustworthy sites are summarised in the following table…”

“…the impact of trust ‘seals’ (for instance, TRUSTe) is uncertain, with some studies finding them to be ineffective (e.g. Nielson et al, 2000). Similarly, the impact of photographs on websites has found to have both a positive impact on trust (Fogg et al, 2001; Nielson et al. 2000) and also neutral or negative impact (Rielgelsberger and Slasse 2001).” p106

“Stanford et al (2002) reported that experts assessed websites using reputation and their analysis of the information quality, while consumers were more swayed by the attractiveness of the website design.” p106

Interesting concluding thoughts for this book were as follows:

“The critical question facing those who design Internet Services is whether or not trust can be designed into systems without losing the benefits of privacy and freedom of expression provided by anonymous and pseudononymous environments. Perhaps first it is important to recognise that in many circumstances trust does not require touch, but it does require time. Studies of computer mediated communication that place strangers in new situations in order to study trust are found to fail if time is not allowed for ‘off-message’ activities that build trust…However we can shorten the process by designing systems that allow us to use other people’s trust experiences as a proxy for our own experiences…Trust cues – for instance, to competence or integrity – can also be designed into websites.” p144

As I have highlighted this point is exactly what I would like to investigate in my studies.

“Blogging is a new form of persuasive communication that is significant for several reasons…gives considerable power to single individuals. Bloggers are able to easily write about their experiences while commanding an international audience of readers.” p4

“…blogging suggests that the INternet has emerged as a persuasive medium which has international access and appeal.” p4

effective means = famous people, humour, when and where

“Humour is an effective tool to help audiences remember a persuasive message.” p5

“…in today’s world, the media serve as intermediaries…coming between audiences and persuaders.” p6

“…someone is almost always trying to persuade us to believe something different or behave in a certain way.” p6

With this in mind how can we take back that control and use media to our advantage as designers to manipulate how people behave on the Internet?

“…the Internet will forever change those who use it.” p11

“Price and Price (2002) explain that hypermedia fundamentally change the relationship between persuader and audience members.” p11

Hypermedia = ie., video, sound, image etc

“With hypermedia, there is no longer one persuader who provides information to a mass audience. Instead, ‘many individuals exchange information with each other, aided by some people who do more writing than others.’p4 “p11

“The creator of a website, for instance, does not usually know how users will travel through the site. Users have a great deal of discretion in determining the length of time they spend on a page and what page they look at next…users, or audience members, have a great deal of power to manipulate and control the communication setting.” p11

I disagree with this. I believe the the ‘creator’ in my studies this would be the designer, can have the power to control the user and persuade them down a particular path through methods of trust, influence and persuasion. My studies are investigating this further. Although the viewer/user have a greater deal of control I believe with better understanding of tools to the the designers disposal it is about the positioning of content on the page that can determine actions of others.

“…allowing viewers to email their questions to the show…they become participants, influencing the questions that are asked and the direction of the discussion.” p12

For this book the definition of persuasion is based upon Burke’s Theory, “the use of symbols, by one symbol – using entity to introduce action in another.”;
“Persuasion is the coproduction of meaning that results when an individual or group of individuals uses language strategies and/or other images (such as images, music, or sounds) to make audiences identify with that individual or group.” p17

This definition refers to the methods used however I would extend this to elaborate on persuasion more defining it as a form of changing a persons’ behaviour deliberately through such mentioned methods, this is therefore seen as manipulative due to its abilities to sway opinions of others. Due to the deliberate approach of this method this can be seem as only temporary and not a preferred option to be adopted.

The question then lies of how influence is used following on from my definition of it being a more powerful source which acts silently with little to no effort needing to be made. This method is based predominantly on credibility and trust, trust which I shall investigate further in my research.

“…persuasion is a process instead of a simple one-way tranformation. Persuaders create messages…but persuasive process is incomplete until the audience becomes involved.” p17

Persuasion is audience orientated.
“The source (or persuader) does not necessarily have an authority position. The source uses language strategies and visual images to suggest meaning to an audience, but the audience, using its own attitudes and reasoning skills, constructs its own meaning.” p22

“…the website’s creator often loses control when the site provides interactive elemments such as search devices.” p22

My studies will investigate if this is the case and if this can be changed.

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Methods of persuasion for the persuader

An example of persuasion was with Pepsi Twist advert whereby they did not mention anything about the taste and instead played on featuring The Osbournes to ‘persuade’ the consumer to purchase this product
Can the use of familiar faces help with the building of trust and therefore influence?

“…using sophisticated tools of audience analysis. By understanding their audiences, persuaders can attempt to influence how those audiences identify with them. Yet there is no guarantee that persuaders will succeed in doing this.” p22

In the previous module I spent some significant amount of time understanding the audience of review systems in the hope to create a system to persuade.

“…persuaders think that we will be more likely to identify with them if we encounter them more frequently.” p26

“Persuasion today is often invisible” p28. My argument here would be that surely this would therefore be influence rather than persuasion where little to no effort is required to control the action of others on the Web?

Aristotle believed that the use of proof can persuade audiences. p37
-images represent reality, therefore images serve as proof for persuaders’ messages.

I would get the words created in the form of personalised confetti and contact friends about the country and get them to filtrate the words in to society by leaving them in their wake everywhere they go! And in doing so photographing the evidence as they do this. I too of course will be doing the same

After much to-ing and fro-ing, checking type faces these where what I got!

And off they begin to friends in London to start with:

Out and About spreading the words

For more detailed view of all the data collection made in this study please click on the following link: FULL DATA COLLECTION