ScholarSignal
Menu
Sign inEvaluate an idea

Evidence · Consumer psychology

Social influence and persuasion: evidence for marketers

People take cues from what others do, from authority and from scarcity, and several of these effects hold outside the laboratory: messages describing what other guests do raise hotel towel reuse, and a friend's name on an ad raises clicks. Word of mouth, including online reviews, is associated with higher sales on average. But many classic persuasion principles rest on single laboratory experiments from decades ago, and norm-based messages can backfire when they tell people they are doing better than average.

Definition

Social influence is the way other people, their behaviour, their authority and what they appear to want, changes an individual's own judgments and actions. Persuasion is the deliberate use of messages and cues to change attitudes or behaviour. In marketing the main levers are social proof (showing what others do), social norms, the credibility and status of the source, scarcity, and word of mouth passed between customers.

What the research finds

Descriptive norms change behaviour, if framed with care

In two hotel field experiments, signs saying most guests reuse their towels beat the standard environmental appeal, and worked best when they referred to guests who had stayed in the same room. In household energy use, telling people the neighbourhood average saved energy among heavy users but made light users consume more; adding a sign of social approval removed that backfire.[1][2]

Conformity serves basic goals

A major review explains compliance and conformity through three motives: to see reality accurately, to keep good relationships with others, and to maintain a positive view of oneself. Much of this influence works subtly and outside awareness.[3]

Social proof works at platform scale

Field experiments with 5.3 million Facebook users found that adding a friend's name to an ad raised click-through, and the lift grew with how close the friendship was. This is causal evidence that social cues built into ad delivery change response.[4]

Authority and source matter

In the obedience experiments, a majority of participants followed an experimenter's orders to the maximum level of what they believed were painful shocks, showing the power of situational authority. A meta-analysis of persuasion experiments maps how much characteristics of the message source shift attitudes.[5][6]

Scarcity and imperfection can raise value

Items in short supply were rated as more valuable than abundant ones, especially when the scarcity came from high demand. A visible blunder made a highly competent person more likeable but a mediocre person less likeable. Both are single laboratory experiments.[7][8]

Involvement decides what persuades

When people are highly involved, the quality of the arguments drives attitude change; when involvement is low, peripheral cues such as a celebrity endorser carry more weight. This helps explain why low-attention advertising relies on cues rather than arguments.[9]

Word of mouth moves sales

A meta-analysis finds online word of mouth positively related to sales on average, with large differences across platforms, products and metrics. Comparing two online bookstores, a book's reviews changed its relative sales, and negative reviews hurt more than positive ones helped. On a social network site, referrals from members had longer-lasting and larger effects on sign-ups than traditional marketing.[10][11][12]

How strong is the evidence?

The norm and word-of-mouth findings rest on field experiments and large observational data sets. The authority, scarcity and pratfall effects come from single laboratory experiments conducted in the 1960s and 1970s, and the studies reviewed here include no direct re-tests of them in purchase settings; consultant claims built on them often go well beyond what was shown. The Facebook social-proof study is a conference paper by platform researchers. Norm-based messages can backfire, so the direction of the effect depends on how the message is built. Several of these principles overlap with decision biases (scarcity as a valuation bias, authority as a credibility shortcut).

References

  1. Noah J. Goldstein, Robert B. Cialdini, Vladas Griskevicius (2008). A Room with a Viewpoint: Using Social Norms to Motivate Environmental Conservation in Hotels. Journal of Consumer Research.
  2. P. Wesley Schultz, Jessica M. Nolan, Robert B. Cialdini, Noah J. Goldstein, Vladas Griskevicius (2007). The Constructive, Destructive, and Reconstructive Power of Social Norms. Psychological Science.
  3. Robert B. Cialdini, Noah J. Goldstein (2004). Social Influence: Compliance and Conformity. Annual Review of Psychology.
  4. Eytan Bakshy, Dean Eckles, Rong Yan, Itamar Rosenn (2012). Social Influence in Social Advertising: Evidence from Field Experiments. Proceedings of the 13th ACM Conference on Electronic Commerce.
  5. Stanley Milgram (1963). Behavioral Study of Obedience. Journal of Abnormal and Social Psychology.
  6. Elizabeth J. Wilson, Daniel L. Sherrell (1993). Source effects in communication and persuasion research: A meta-analysis of effect size. Journal of the Academy of Marketing Science.
  7. Stephen Worchel, Jerry Lee, Akanbi Adewole (1975). Effects of Supply and Demand on Ratings of Object Value. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology.
  8. Elliot Aronson, Ben Willerman, Joanne Floyd (1966). The effect of a pratfall on increasing interpersonal attractiveness. Psychonomic Science.
  9. Richard E. Petty, John T. Cacioppo, David Schumann (1983). Central and Peripheral Routes to Advertising Effectiveness: The Moderating Role of Involvement. Journal of Consumer Research.
  10. Ana Babić Rosario, Francesca Sotgiu, Kristine De Valck, Tammo H.A. Bijmolt (2015). The Effect of Electronic Word of Mouth on Sales: A Meta-Analytic Review of Platform, Product, and Metric Factors. Journal of Marketing Research.
  11. Judith A. Chevalier, Dina Mayzlin (2006). The Effect of Word of Mouth on Sales: Online Book Reviews. Journal of Marketing Research.
  12. Michael Trusov, Randolph E. Bucklin, Koen Pauwels (2009). Effects of Word-of-Mouth Versus Traditional Marketing: Findings from an Internet Social Networking Site. Journal of Marketing.

Bibliographic details only. Follow the DOI to read each study at its publisher.

Related topics

A synthesis of 12 studies, written by ScholarSignal. Last reviewed 2026-09-26.

Building on this evidence?

ScholarSignal checks a new research idea against the closest existing work and an editor rubric, and tells you whether the contribution is new enough for the journals you target.

Evaluate my idea for free