Why Susceptibility to Interpersonal Influence Ought to Be Used to Segment Consumer Markets

Abstract

Abstract Based on a long-standing tradition of research in the academic marketing literature on Anglo-American consumer susceptibility to interpersonal influence (see e.g., Park & Lessig 1977) we now know what the mean levels of susceptibility are to informational and normative interpersonal-influence in this population. However, unfortunately, in this same literature we know practically nothing about the mean levels of these two types of influence in the African-, Asian-, and Hispanic-American populations in the U.S. This issue is investigated in this paper by assessing the mean levels of these types of influence in comparable samples of African-, Chinese-, Hispanic-, and Anglo-Americans in the U.S. using the measure of Bearden, Netemeyer and Teel (1989). When we compared these four samples on the level of their susceptibility to informational and normative interpersonal-influence, we found the following. Chinese-Americans were far more susceptible and Hispanic-Americans far less susceptible to normative...