IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/a/oup/jconrs/v48y2021i2p189-211..html
   My bibliography  Save this article

Audio Mining: The Role of Vocal Tone in Persuasion

Author

Listed:
  • Xin (Shane) Wang
  • Shijie Lu
  • X I Li
  • Mansur Khamitov
  • Neil Bendle
  • J. Jeffrey Inman
  • Andrew T Stephen

Abstract

Persuasion success is often related to hard-to-measure characteristics, such as the way the persuader speaks. To examine how vocal tones impact persuasion in an online appeal, this research measures persuaders’ vocal tones in Kickstarter video pitches using novel audio mining technology. Connecting vocal tone dimensions with real-world funding outcomes offers insight into the impact of vocal tones on receivers’ actions. The core hypothesis of this paper is that a successful persuasion attempt is associated with vocal tones denoting (1) focus, (2) low stress, and (3) stable emotions. These three vocal tone dimensions—which are in line with the stereotype content model—matter because they allow receivers to make inferences about a persuader’s competence. The hypotheses are tested with a large-scale empirical study using Kickstarter data, which is then replicated in a different category. In addition, two controlled experiments provide evidence that perceptions of competence mediate the impact of the three vocal tones on persuasion attempt success. The results identify key indicators of persuasion attempt success and suggest a greater role for audio mining in academic consumer research.

Suggested Citation

  • Xin (Shane) Wang & Shijie Lu & X I Li & Mansur Khamitov & Neil Bendle & J. Jeffrey Inman & Andrew T Stephen, 2021. "Audio Mining: The Role of Vocal Tone in Persuasion," Journal of Consumer Research, Journal of Consumer Research Inc., vol. 48(2), pages 189-211.
  • Handle: RePEc:oup:jconrs:v:48:y:2021:i:2:p:189-211.
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: http://hdl.handle.net/10.1093/jcr/ucab012
    Download Restriction: Access to full text is restricted to subscribers.
    ---><---

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

    Citations

    Citations are extracted by the CitEc Project, subscribe to its RSS feed for this item.
    as


    Cited by:

    1. Emaad Manzoor & Nikhil Malik, 2023. "Designing Effective Music Excerpts," Papers 2309.14475, arXiv.org.
    2. Xin (Shane) Wang & Neil Bendle & Yinjie Pan, 2024. "Beyond text: Marketing strategy in a world turned upside down," Journal of the Academy of Marketing Science, Springer, vol. 52(4), pages 939-954, July.
    3. Shuili Du & Assaad El Akremi & Ming Jia, 2023. "Quantitative Research on Corporate Social Responsibility: A Quest for Relevance and Rigor in a Quickly Evolving, Turbulent World," Journal of Business Ethics, Springer, vol. 187(1), pages 1-15, September.
    4. Allison, Thomas H. & Warnick, Benjamin J. & Davis, Blakley C. & Cardon, Melissa S., 2022. "Can you hear me now? Engendering passion and preparedness perceptions with vocal expressions in crowdfunding pitches," Journal of Business Venturing, Elsevier, vol. 37(3).
    5. Jeffrey D. Shulman & Olivier Toubia & Raena Saddler, 2023. "Editorial: Marketing’s Role in the Evolving Discipline of Product Management," Marketing Science, INFORMS, vol. 42(1), pages 1-5, January.

    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:oup:jconrs:v:48:y:2021:i:2:p:189-211.. 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.

    We have no bibliographic references for this item. You can help adding them by using 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: the person in charge (email available below). General contact details of provider: https://academic.oup.com/jcr .

    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.