IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/a/eee/ijrema/v27y2010i2p133-141.html
   My bibliography  Save this article

Better think before agreeing twice

Author

Listed:
  • Pandelaere, Mario
  • Briers, Barbara
  • Dewitte, Siegfried
  • Warlop, Luk

Abstract

The present paper shows that the frequency of people's compliance with a request can be substantially increased if the requester first gets them to agree with a series of statements unrelated to the request but selected to induce agreement. We label this effect the ‘mere-agreement effect’ and present a two-step similarity-based mechanism to explain it. Across five studies, we show that induced mere agreement subtly causes respondents to view the presenter of the statements as similar to themselves, which in turn increases the frequency compliance with a request from that same person. We support the similarity explanation by showing that the effect of agreement on compliance is suppressed when agreement is induced to indicate dissimilarity with the interviewer, when the request is made by some other person, and when the artificially high level of agreement is made salient. We also validate the practical relevance of the mere-agreement persuasion technique in a field study. We discuss how the mere-agreement effect can be broadly used as a tool to increase cooperation and be readily implemented in marketing interactions.

Suggested Citation

  • Pandelaere, Mario & Briers, Barbara & Dewitte, Siegfried & Warlop, Luk, 2010. "Better think before agreeing twice," International Journal of Research in Marketing, Elsevier, vol. 27(2), pages 133-141.
    • Handle: RePEc:eee:ijrema:v:27:y:2010:i:2:p:133-141
    DOI: 10.1016/j.ijresmar.2010.01.003
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0167811610000182
    Download Restriction: Full text for ScienceDirect subscribers only
    File URL: https://libkey.io/10.1016/j.ijresmar.2010.01.003?utm_source=ideas
    LibKey link: if access is restricted and if your library uses this service, LibKey will redirect you to where you can use your library subscription to access this item
    ---><---

    As the access to this document is restricted, you may want to search for a different version of it.

    References listed on IDEAS

    as
    1. Robin J. Tanner & Rosellina Ferraro & Tanya L. Chartrand & James R. Bettman & Rick Van Baaren, 2008. "Of Chameleons and Consumption: The Impact of Mimicry on Choice and Preferences," Journal of Consumer Research, Journal of Consumer Research Inc., vol. 34(6), pages 754-766, August.
    2. Bob M. Fennis & Loes Janssen & Kathleen D. Vohs, 2009. "Acts of Benevolence: A Limited-Resource Account of Compliance with Charitable Requests," Journal of Consumer Research, Journal of Consumer Research Inc., vol. 35(6), pages 906-924, April.
    3. Cornelissen, Gert & Pandelaere, Mario & Warlop, Luk & Dewitte, Siegfried, 2008. "Positive cueing: Promoting sustainable consumer behavior by cueing common environmental behaviors as environmental," International Journal of Research in Marketing, Elsevier, vol. 25(1), pages 46-55.
    4. Ruffle, Bradley J., 1998. "More Is Better, But Fair Is Fair: Tipping in Dictator and Ultimatum Games," Games and Economic Behavior, Elsevier, vol. 23(2), pages 247-265, May.
    5. Gopinath, Mahesh & Nyer, Prashanth U., 2009. "The effect of public commitment on resistance to persuasion: The influence of attitude certainty, issue importance, susceptibility to normative influence, preference for consistency and source proximi," International Journal of Research in Marketing, Elsevier, vol. 26(1), pages 60-68.
    Full references (including those not matched with items on IDEAS)

    Most related items

    These are the items that most often cite the same works as this one and are cited by the same works as this one.
    1. Shi, Daqian & Lu, Shan & Fang, Ziwei, 2024. "The effect of executive green human capital on greenwashing," Research in International Business and Finance, Elsevier, vol. 71(C).
    2. James C. Cox & Vjollca Sadiraj, 2018. "Incentives," Experimental Economics Center Working Paper Series 2018-01, Experimental Economics Center, Andrew Young School of Policy Studies, Georgia State University.
    3. Cattaneo, Cristina & D’Adda, Giovanna & Tavoni, Massimo & Bonan, Jacopo, 2019. "Can We Make Social Information Programs More Effective? The Role of Identity and Values," RFF Working Paper Series 19-21, Resources for the Future.
    4. Pamela Jakiela & Edward Miguel & Vera Velde, 2015. "You’ve earned it: estimating the impact of human capital on social preferences," Experimental Economics, Springer;Economic Science Association, vol. 18(3), pages 385-407, September.
    5. Takeuchi, Ai & Veszteg, Róbert F. & Kamijo, Yoshio & Funaki, Yukihiko, 2022. "Bargaining over a jointly produced pie: The effect of the production function on bargaining outcomes," Games and Economic Behavior, Elsevier, vol. 134(C), pages 169-198.
    6. Binmore, Ken & McCarthy, John & Ponti, Giovanni & Samuelson, Larry & Shaked, Avner, 2002. "A Backward Induction Experiment," Journal of Economic Theory, Elsevier, vol. 104(1), pages 48-88, May.
    7. Simon G�chter & Ernst Fehr, "undated". "Fairness in the Labour Market � A Survey of Experimental Results," IEW - Working Papers 114, Institute for Empirical Research in Economics - University of Zurich.
    8. Pamela Jakiela, 2013. "Equity vs. efficiency vs. self-interest: on the use of dictator games to measure distributional preferences," Experimental Economics, Springer;Economic Science Association, vol. 16(2), pages 208-221, June.
    9. Ofer Azar, 2009. "Incentives and service quality in the restaurant industry: the tipping-service puzzle," Applied Economics, Taylor & Francis Journals, vol. 41(15), pages 1917-1927.
    10. Zeng, Fue & Ye, Qing & Li, Jing & Yang, Zhilin, 2021. "Does self-disclosure matter? A dynamic two-stage perspective for the personalization-privacy paradox," Journal of Business Research, Elsevier, vol. 124(C), pages 667-675.
    11. Larney, Andrea & Rotella, Amanda & Barclay, Pat, 2019. "Stake size effects in ultimatum game and dictator game offers: A meta-analysis," Organizational Behavior and Human Decision Processes, Elsevier, vol. 151(C), pages 61-72.
    12. Wichardt, Philipp C. & Schunk, Daniel & Schmitz, Patrick W., 2009. "Participation costs for responders can reduce rejection rates in ultimatum bargaining," Economics Letters, Elsevier, vol. 103(1), pages 33-35, April.
    13. Panzone, Luca A. & Ulph, Alistair & Zizzo, Daniel John & Hilton, Denis & Clear, Adrian, 2021. "The impact of environmental recall and carbon taxation on the carbon footprint of supermarket shopping," Journal of Environmental Economics and Management, Elsevier, vol. 109(C).
    14. Olivier Armantier, 2006. "Do Wealth Differences Affect Fairness Considerations?," International Economic Review, Department of Economics, University of Pennsylvania and Osaka University Institute of Social and Economic Research Association, vol. 47(2), pages 391-429, May.
    15. Chad M. Baum & Christian Gross, 2017. "Sustainability policy as if people mattered: developing a framework for environmentally significant behavioral change," Journal of Bioeconomics, Springer, vol. 19(1), pages 53-95, April.
    16. Abigail Barr & Justine Burns & Luis Miller & Ingrid Shaw, 2011. "Individual notions of distributive justice and relative economic status," Discussion Papers 2011005, University of Oxford, Nuffield College.
    17. Fong, Cher-Min & Chang, Hsing-Hua Stella & Lin, Mong-Ching & Chen, I-Hung, 2022. "Reexamining emerging market animosity toward western developed countries: A social dilemma in physical retailing consumption under normative influence," Journal of Retailing and Consumer Services, Elsevier, vol. 68(C).
    18. Hyoji Kwon & Yukihiko Funaki, 2022. "Do Strict Egalitarians Really Exist?," Working Papers 2206, Waseda University, Faculty of Political Science and Economics.
    19. Aguiar, Fernando & Brañas-Garza, Pablo & Miller, Luis M., 2008. "Moral distance in dictator games," Judgment and Decision Making, Cambridge University Press, vol. 3(4), pages 344-354, April.
    20. Lucia A. Reisch & Andreas Oehler, 2009. "Behavioral Economics: eine neue Grundlage für die Verbraucherpolitik?," Vierteljahrshefte zur Wirtschaftsforschung / Quarterly Journal of Economic Research, DIW Berlin, German Institute for Economic Research, vol. 78(3), pages 30-43.

    Corrections

    All material on this site has been provided by the respective publishers and authors. You can help correct errors and omissions. When requesting a correction, please mention this item's handle: RePEc:eee:ijrema:v:27:y:2010:i:2:p:133-141. See general information about how to correct material in RePEc.

    If you have authored this item and are not yet registered with RePEc, we encourage you to do it here. This allows to link your profile to this item. It also allows you to accept potential citations to this item that we are uncertain about.

    If CitEc recognized a bibliographic reference but did not link an item in RePEc to it, you can help with this form .

    If you know of missing items citing this one, you can help us creating those links by adding the relevant references in the same way as above, for each refering item. If you are a registered author of this item, you may also want to check the "citations" tab in your RePEc Author Service profile, as there may be some citations waiting for confirmation.

    For technical questions regarding this item, or to correct its authors, title, abstract, bibliographic or download information, contact: Catherine Liu (email available below). General contact details of provider: https://www.journals.elsevier.com/international-journal-of-research-in-marketing/ .

    Please note that corrections may take a couple of weeks to filter through the various RePEc services.

    IDEAS is a RePEc service. RePEc uses bibliographic data supplied by the respective publishers.