Persuasive Design for Customer Relationship Management

Persuasive Design for Customer

Relationship Management

WENYI CHONG

10595228

SUBMITTED IN PARTIAL FULLFILLMENT FOR THE DEGREE OF

MASTER OF SCIENCE

M

ASTER

I

NFORMATION

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TUDIES

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UMAN-

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ENTERED

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ULTIMEDIA

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ACULTY OF

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CIENCE

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NIVERSITY OF

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MSTERDAM

June 23, 2017

1st Supervisor

Dr. Frank Nack

University of Amsterdam (UvA)

2nd Supervisor

Dr. Dan Buzzo

Persuasive Design for Customer Relationship Management

Wenyi Chong

University of Amsterdam Science Park 904, the Netherlands

wenyi.cwy@gmail.com

ABSTRACT

Nowadays, companies focus on maintaining an online pres-ence. This requires new techniques in order to successfully attract customers and to increase online transactions. Per-suasive design provides a powerful solution to change the behaviour of customers through effective usage of design el-ements. By viewing the management of customer relation-ships in the perspective of the nudge theory, it can be un-derstood how certain customers’ behaviour can be subtlety imposed. In this paper we investigate: ‘What are the effects of persuasive design for CRM customer acquisition?’. This research aims to provide insights on how companies can em-ploy persuasive design to enhance customer acquisition, and ultimately to enable better alignment of strategies to pursue customer life cycles with its potential customers.

Keywords

persuasive design, customer relationship management, CRM, customer life cycle, e-business, e-commerce

1.

INTRODUCTION

The digitalisation of web stores has decreased face-to-face contact with the customer while introducing the ease for cus-tomers to switch companies. In a world of limited time and attention, customer attention and loyalty has become more difficult to come by. Digitalisation has brought a dynamic shift in the e-business world. Nowadays, ‘bricks and mortar’ companies are rapidly transforming to ‘bricks and clicks’ or are even replaced by ‘clicks’, due to their benefits to reach a wider audience at lower cost. This indicates a shift to an online presence with increased online transactions and customer service (Chaffey, 2009). Managing customer rela-tionships is becoming an essential part of the business strat-egy. Customer relationship management refers to “a set of processes and enabling systems supporting a business strat-egy to build long term, profitable relationships with specific customers” (Ling & Yen, 2001, p. 82). While customer rela-tionship management (CRM) systems introduced the power for enterprises to gain a better understanding of their cus-tomer groups, new strategies are required to attract and to retain potential customers.

The design of an e-commerce website is important since it serves as a portal between a company and its potential customers. Similar to the design of products, designers can shape the website to convey a message. While e-commerce websites serve as a way for site visitors to find information, the main driver for businesses is to increase transactions.

E-commerce websites can be considered to be a mix between advertising and direct selling, since it facilitates engagement with visitors (Berthon, Pittb, & Watson, 1996). Viewing the design of a website as to possess persuasive intentions, allows for an alternative view to be taken, which states that design can indeed be shaped to change the attitudes and actions of people. Such a view of persuasive design is derived from the nudge theory (Thaler & Sunstein, 2008), and recognises that decision making might not necessarily serve the inter-est of people (Crilly, 2011). This research therefore aims to gain a better understanding of the behaviours of site visi-tors, which could help businesses to better understand their target groups and to support the management of customers.

2.

RELATED WORK

2.1

Persuasive Web Design

Persuasive web design refers to ‘the art of science of de-signing web sites that help users to make decisions that re-sult in desirable transactions’ (Chak, 2003, p. 4). Persua-sion in this context refers to “human communication that is designed to influence people’s beliefs, values, or attitudes” (Kim & Fesenmaier, 2008, p. 3). It has been argued that nudging or persuasion in design is to support people with “relevant information in a language they can understand, in a place they can conveniently reach, at a time where the in-formation is needed” (Junginger, 2015). According to Fogg (2009), attempts at persuasive design tend to fail due to the fact that designers do not understand what factors would lead to behaviour change.

While various studies (Tan & Tung, 2003; Rosen & Pur-inton, 2004; Aladwani & Palvia, 2002) and design guidelines (Williams, 2015; Leavitt & Shneiderman, 2006) provide a better understanding of the effects of website design, these researches are more focused on the usage of design elements. Aesthetic features are found to affect the interaction of the user with the website, which underlines the importance of a first impression. Similarly, the chosen colour scheme affect the user’s emotions, perceived trustworthiness and the dura-tion of the visit (Bonnardel, Piolat, & Le Bigot, 2011). Fur-thermore, the type of navigation hierarchy and navigation depth can aid the accessibility of web pages, while the posi-tioning of links in specific orders was not found to increase the ability to find the intended navigation path (Johnson, 2013; DeWitt, 2010). In addition, several persuasive de-sign examples have been analysed, such as the presentation of photos of your friends during the deactivation process

of Facebook1 _{and the usage of funny sayings to decrease} frustrations with MailChimp2 (Anderson, 2011). Research has shown that destination websites with visually appealing stimuli, such as the usage of scenic photos destinations, in addition to a focus on promoting ease of navigation, are able to persuade site visitors to become users, and this favourable first impression subsequently enables visitors to disregard or downplay negative aspects (Kim & Fesenmaier, 2008).

Nonetheless, less is known about what the individual ef-fects of design elements are in a scientific perspective and with the specific focus on the persuasion of visitors to be-come customers.

2.2

Design for Behavioural Change

Several behavioural change theories and models are avail-able, which provide the potential to better understand how designs could effectively support the behavioural change of users.

2.2.1

The Fogg Behavioral Model

The Fogg Behavioral Model (FBM) (Fogg, 2009) is a psy-chological model that provides insights into the factors that are of influence for human behaviour. The model (Figure 1) asserts that in order for a target behaviour to take place, the person should possess sufficient motivation and ability, facilitated by an effective trigger.

Figure 1: The Fogg Behavioral Model (Fogg, 2009) The motivation could be affected by core motivators: plea-sure/pain, hope/fear, and social acceptance/rejection. The core motivator of social acceptance/rejection is important, since it shows that the behaviour of site visitors could be influenced by the behaviour of other people. The ability of a user to act is inherent to the simplicity of the experience, and is influenced by the amount of time, money, and physi-cal effort that a user can allocate, in addition to the ability to think deeply (brain cycles), to defy against social norms, and to cope with non-routine behaviours. The ability factor, in particular, shows that persuasive designs have to take into account that the ability of new visitors to learn new things could differ and that simplicity of actions should be provided when a behaviour is triggered, to reduce barriers to perform a target behaviour. The model recognises that there could be trade-off between a site visitor’s motivation and the abil-1_{Facebook. http://facebook.com/}

2

MailChimp. https://mailchimp.com/

ity to perform the intended behaviour. In short, while a user might have low motivation to perform the target behaviour, the persuasive design has the potential to succeed when the behaviour is simpler to perform.

Additionally, triggers can persuade users to perform a tar-get behaviour at the intended time. Three types of triggers can be identified. A spark that is associated with a target behaviour is able to persuade a user when presented at the moment when an action can be taken. A facilitator trigger, on the other hand, shows the user that the target behaviour is simple to perform, and therefore persuades the user that the action can easily take place without too much resources. In addition, a signal trigger serves as a reminder for users with the ability and the motivation to perform the target behaviour. Triggers are especially important in a digital context, since the site visitor is able to perform a target behaviour immediately upon receiving a trigger to do so. Triggers in an online context does not require a change of medium or context, and therefore increases the chance of users to act on impulse (Fogg, 2009).

The model is relevant as it shows that the effectiveness of a persuasive element to evoke an intended behaviour depends on the amount of motivation and ability for the site visitor to take action, and the availability of the right type of triggers. While the FBM model provides factors that can be used to improve the effectiveness of persuasive design, it is limited to the aspects of motivation and ability of site visitors.

2.2.2

Nudge Theory and MINDSPACE Framework

A nudge is ‘any aspect of the choice architecture that al-ters people’s behavior in a predictable way without forbidding any options or significantly changing their economic incen-tives’ (Thaler & Sunstein, 2008, p. 6). The nudge the-ory recognises that human beings are not always rational when making decisions (Anderson, 2011). A human brain involves two kinds of thinking: the Automatic System refers to a person’s gut reaction, and is characterised by intuitive and automatic thinking, while the Reflective System refers to one’s conscious thought, which is more deliberate and self-conscious. The decision-making process of a person is often an interplay between the Automatic System and the Reflective System (Thaler & Sunstein, 2008).

The nudge theory recognises that choice architecture and its effects cannot be avoided in daily lives, but nudges could be offered to either help people or to inflict minimal harm, especially when decisions are rare and difficult, where provi-sion of prompt feedback is not possible and when people have trouble understanding the situation. According to Thaler (2008), default rules are inevitable, people often either have difficulties in choosing or consider choosing to be a nuisance, and they are subsceptible to mistakes. Thus, design can be employed to provide feedback and to force people to make their own choice (Thaler & Sunstein, 2008).

The MINDSPACE Framework, in addition, provides a classification to the behavioural influences on the human be-haviour, intended to support policy-making aimed at chang-ing or shapchang-ing behaviour (Table 1) (Dolan et al., 2010).

The influence of messenger asserts that people react dif-ferently to information depending on how they perceived the messenger. Factors such as the perceived authority, ex-pertise, similarities in demography and behaviour, and peer effects could evoke increased reactions to information.

Table 1: MINDSPACE Framework (Dolan et al., 2010) Influences Description

Messenger We are heavily influenced by who communicates information.

Incentives Our responses to incentives are shaped by predictable mental short-cuts such as strongly avoiding losses. Norms We are strongly influenced by what

others do.

Defaults We ’go with the flow’ of pre-set op-tions.

Salience Our attention is drawn to what is novel and seems relevant to us. Priming Our acts are often influenced by

sub-conscious cues.

Affect Our emotional associations can pow-erfully shape our actions.

Commitments We seek to be consistent with our pub-lic promises, and reciprocate acts. Ego We act in ways that make us feel

bet-ter about ourselves.

Incentives could also be used as a motivation for be-havioural change. Monetary and other forms of incentives, as well as the magnitude and timing of the incentive, can be used to positively influence the motivation for change. Additionally, the influence of norms recognises the effects of existing social and cultural norms, which could be used to impose certain expectations or rules within a society or group. People are more likely to follow a norm when they see other people demonstrate the similar behaviour. People are also influenced by the presence of default options. A person is often more likely to accept a pre-selected option out of con-venience, despite possible consequences. A default option helps an individual make decisions when one fails to do. The human behaviour can also be influenced by the salience. It recognises that people tend to filter information, which en-ables them to only focus their attention on relevant stimuli. In particular, people are more likely to be drawn to novel, ac-cessible and simple stimuli, and thus behavioural change can be imposed through the right presentation of information. Similarly, human behaviour is often subjected to priming. Priming allows for behaviour to be altered by the first ex-posure of certain sights, words or sensations. This shows that the order of how information are presented could also have an impact on the human behaviour. Subsequently, the decision-making can be influenced by how people respond emotionally, also referred to as affect. Emotional responses to stimuli and changes in moods can influence the judgement of people, which could impact a person’s ability to make de-liberate decisions. People also tend to be consistent with commitments to promises, especially when the costs for failure increases. Lastly, people also have a strong tendency to upheld a positive self-image. The influence of ego recog-nises that an improvement of self-esteem could positively influence the motivation for change. Furthermore, the de-sire to maintain a positive self-images causes a tendency for comparison with other people (Dolan et al., 2010).

All in all, the framework recognises that human behaviour can change depending on several factors. While the frame-work was intended for policy-makers, the proposed

influ-ences also provide a way to categorise effects of behavioural change. Therefore, the MINDSPACE framework is relevant for this research analysis of behavioural change caused by persuasive design elements. The concept of nudges and its behavioural influences is not new. Although the concept was previously commonly associated with the domain of gover-nance and health care, designers have also realised its po-tential to be employed for products and systems. The nudge theory shows that human decision-making are often flawed, and that design could influence their choices.

2.2.3

Persuasion Knowledge Model

The Persuasion Knowledge Model (PKM) takes a differ-ent perspective, as it asserts that people are actually aware of persuasive tactics that are used to influence them. Specif-ically, the model presumes that a site visitor (“the target”), has access to persuasion knowledge when brought in contact with persuasion attempts. The PKM in particular shows that a persuasion attempt as intended by a company (“the agent”) can be perceived differently by the targeted visitor, depending on the target’s observation of the message and the knowledge he/she possesses. This could therefore in-fluence how the visitor interpret and respond (“cope”) to a persuasion attempt (Friestad & Wright, 1994).

The PKM model is significant as it recognises that con-sumers are able to benefit from persuasion attempts, by at-tempting to “guide their pursuit to their own goals while marketing is occurring” (J. Thomas, Briesch, & Tseng, 2016, p. 7). Such a view of persuasion shows that persuasive de-sign does not merely impose behavioural change; in fact, a consumer is able to cope with persuasion depending on what he/she believes is an appropriate response and thus align persuasion with one’s goals and to shape the percep-tion of the company. The ability of a consumer to cope with persuasion depends however on the duration of the relation-ship with the company. In particular, a consumer who is less familiar with the product or market is more susceptible to persuasion since he/she has less knowledge to draw upon (J. Thomas et al., 2016).

2.3

Customer Relationship Management

For the management of customer relationship, four phases can be distinguished as part of a customer life cycle. A customer life cycle depicts the activities that are required to manage the relationship of an individual customer. The stages of a classic customer life cycle include (Chaffey, 2009): 1. Customer Selection: The phase of customer selec-tion is to define and identify the target groups of poten-tial customers which the company aims to market to. Target customer types are defined and subsequently segmented based on criteria.

2. Customer Acquisition: The phase of customer ac-quisition comprises the activities with the intention to ‘form relationships with new customers’. The main purpose of this phase would be to attract new visitors and to purchase products or subscribe to services, and therefore becoming a customer to the company. 3. Customer Retention: The phase of customer

reten-tion refers to the activities which are undertaken by a company to sustain the customer relationship. In other words, this phase aims to increase and retain

customer loyalty in order for the company to keep ex-isting customers.

4. Customer Extension: Lastly, the phase of customer extension is aimed to increase the profitability of a customer by increasing the ‘depth or range of products that a customer purchases from a company’.

The various stages of the customer life cycle require dif-ferent applications of a CRM system. From an e-business perspective, the company’s e-commerce website has the most impact in shaping the perception of the company’s brand, since the potential customer will come into contact with the website first. Since little to no face-to-face contact is possi-ble, the potential customer solely forms a first impression of the company based on the user experience with the website. The experience would be the deciding factor for a customer to pursue a relationship with the company. Whether a cus-tomer life cycle can be established is therefore dependent on the website’s ability to convert potential customers into real customers. Such an implication emphasises the importance of the customer acquisition phase, since a company must at-tract and persuade a customer to purchase a product and/or services first, as a first step in pursuing a customer life cy-cle. Persuasive design could provide insightful information on how to persuade prospects to make purchases, and could therefore serve as a technique to support the customer ac-quisition phase.

2.3.1

Customer Acquisition

Customers can be seen as assets to be required before a company is able to manage them for profit (Levitt, 1986). Previously most firms placed their attention on customer retention, since many existing data are about existing cus-tomers. Research, however, has shown that the acquisition of customers are of importance for the development of cus-tomer relationships (J. S. Thomas, 2001). Nonetheless, the customer acquisition process seem to be a challenge for most companies, since they often fail to adequately target their ac-quisition activities (Blattberg, Malthouse, & Neslin, 2009).

Customer acquisition deals with which potential customers to target, how to communicate with them and what to of-fer them (Buttle, 2004). Several types of customers can be distinguished that are relevant for customer acquisition. A visitor who has expressed an interest in making a purchase could be classified as a prospect, and subsequently trans-forms into a new customer once making a purchase (Cutler & Sterne, 2000). The Internet serves as acquisition chan-nels, consisting of e-mail campaigns and web sites. Acquisi-tion channels that use the Internet as a medium differ from traditional channels since the customers themselves take the initiative to communicate with a company instead (Verhoef & Donkers, 2005). A related concept is permission mar-keting, which implicates that engagement in relationships with customers are initiated through the customer’s permis-sion. This emphasises the importance to provide incentives for customers as part of the customer acquisition process. The pull nature of online media also imply less control for marketers than traditional push channels. The e-commerce website design should therefore provide physical stimuli to encourage visits, and focus on obtaining customers’ e-mail addresses to push messages too (Chaffey, 2009).

2.4

Research Question

The mentioned related works propose that behavioural change can be triggered, and moreover that the design of websites could serve as nudges to evoke change. The nudge theory in particular asserts that peoples’ choice architec-ture can be altered, and moreover that nudges can be of-fered to help in decision-making. Alternatively, this paper proposes that persuasion is also embedded in the design of e-commerce websites, and that behavioural influences can be incorporated into the customer relationship cycle. The challenge of this research is to gain a better insight of what the effects of persuasive design are, and in particular how it could be leveraged for customer acquisition, as an important stepping stone to improve the CRM cycle. Therefore, the paper aims to answer the research question: ‘What are the effects of persuasive design for CRM customer acquisition?’ Consequently, this paper seeks to validate the influences of the MINDSPACE framework when incorporated into an e-commerce perspective. This is foremostly achieved through proposal of an alignment between the relevant influences of the MINDSPACE framework and the goals of the CRM framework (Section 3). Subsequently, design elements and its persuasive intentions and effects are identified through a case study of Booking.com (Section 4), which is commonly known for its persuasive design. The predicted effects are proposed in the form of hypotheses, leading to an A/B test-ing to evaluate the presence of persuasive influences within the CRM domain (Section 5).

3.

MINDSPACE IN THE CRM DOMAIN

While the MINDSPACE framework was originally con-structed as a checklist for policy-makers, this paper proposes that the behavioural influences are also applicable to explain persuasive design elements on e-commerce websites. The aim is to align the behavioural influences with the customer relationship management (CRM) activities from the CRM Framework, and to redefine the behavioural influences in the context of e-commerce. The alignment has been conducted by comparing the behavioural influences with the goal of the CRM activities. The results of the analysis are shown in Table 2. Since the customer selection phase is to define tar-get profiles, it serves as the groundwork for the subsequent phases, and thus its activities are not directly reflected in the design elements. Consequently, the alignment of the frameworks in Table 2 does not include customer selection. Messenger. According to the nudge theory, consistent and unwavering people have the ability to move groups in their preferred direction. In an e-commerce context, the empha-sis on influential people as the source of the information could therefore offer strong signals about what is appropri-ate (Thaler & Sunstein, 2008). Influential people in the sense of e-commerce include voices from experts and other customers to inform prospects about the trustworthiness of the company and products, and is therefore suitable for cus-tomer acquisition and extension.

Incentives. Incentives concern the perception of gains and losses. People are averse to losing and thus have strong de-sires to hold on to current holdings and to not make changes (Thaler & Sunstein, 2008). In an e-commerce context incen-tives concern the emphasis of cost savings, especially for first time customers, and offer benefits to encourage prospects to

stay connected with the company. Furthermore, incentives also imply proving to customers that purchasing products is risk-free. Incentives are therefore suitable for customer acquisition, retention and extension.

Norms. Social influences involves providing information about what other people are doing or thinking. The im-plication is that people learn from others, and thus if many people do something, their actions convey information about what might be best to do too. Social nudging does not have to be intentional, since people can also be influenced by peo-ple who are not trying to influence us (Thaler & Sunstein, 2008). Endorsement of products and recommendations by other customers with demographic and behavioural similar-ities can persuade prospects whether to purchase a certain product, which is suitable for customer acquisition and extension.

Defaults. People often use rules of thumbs to support quick judgments. Anchoring occurs whenever someone starts with a familiar thing, and adjust in the direction as perceived appropriately. This often leads to bias, because the adjust-ments are often insufficient. People also tend to stick with their current situation, also called the status quo bias. Con-sumers may think default options are endorsed by the de-fault setter, and people often take the option that requires the less effort (Thaler & Sunstein, 2008). Defaults in an e-commerce context imply providing default options or selec-tions to simplify the choices for the consumer. Furthermore, presenting high initial prices as anchors emphasises the ben-efits of gains, and leading consumers to believe that he/she is getting an amazing deal. Since rules of thumbs occur in the begin phases and are rarely subjected to change, it is especially relevant for customer acquisition.

Salience. Recent, vivid and easily imagined events have greater impact on human behaviour. A form of salience is the availability bias, which asserts that easily remembered events can inflate probability judgments, and in turn also imply that events that are not likely to be remembered may further distort the likelihood judgments (Thaler & Sunstein, 2008). Salience for e-commerce implies the need to bring at-tention to positive information and benefits of incentives. Positive first impressions are more salient, and therefore the consumer’s attention should be directed to perceive novel information as being relevant to his/her goal. Salience can be used to provide the first time consumer a direction to deal with the abundance of information, while also turn con-sumers’ focus to novel products. Therefore it is suitable for both customer acquisition and extension.

Priming. Priming occurs when subtle influences increases the ease of which a person is able to recall certain informa-tion. In other words, a hint of an idea can trigger an as-sociation that stimulates a certain action. Asking someone what they intend to do increases the likelihood of that per-son to act in accordance with what they answered (Thaler & Sunstein, 2008). Priming in e-commerce implies the usage of situational cues that are relevant to the visitor’s personal situation or stereotype. Exposing customers to carefully se-lected cues encourages them to unconsciously relate to cer-tain events or needs, and in turn enable customers to be convinced to buy new products, and is therefore suitable for customer extension.

Affect. Affect concerns emotional associations that shape the behaviour of people (Dolan et al., 2010). Affect can be caused by optimism and overconfidence. People that are unrealistically optimistic are more likely to take risks. Fur-thermore, people react differently to how information is pre-sented, also called framing (Thaler & Sunstein, 2008). In the context of e-commerce, highlighting the benefits evokes a positive mood. Additionally, framing information in ab-stract words enable consumers to more effectively relate the information with their expectations, and therefore help in filtering relevant information. Affect can be a powerful in-fluence to help consumers make decisions, and is therefore suitable for customer acquisition.

Commitments. People use commitments to achieve long-term goals, and they often conform to what they think peo-ple expect. The act of commitment, especially when penal-ties are imposed, increases the likelihood for an action to be fulfilled (Dolan et al., 2010). Commitments in an e-commerce context suggests the importance for easy proce-dures to support the consumers in committing to their goals. In addition, emphasis should be put on the reciprocity be-tween the buyer and the seller, especially in a consumer-to-consumer (C2C)-context. Commitments could be useful when pursuing a long term relationship with the customer, and is therefore suitable for customer retention.

Ego. Similarly, people tend to behave accordingly to up-held a positive and consistent self-image. The performance increases whenever great expectations are placed on people (Dolan et al., 2010). The implications of ego for e-commerce is that consumers are likely to respond positively to attri-butions that are able to make them feel better about them-selves. The influence of ego also suggests that commitment to a product or service should be sought through initial small requests, which can subsequently be increased over a period of time, and is therefore suitable for customer retention.

Table 2: Alignment of the MINDSPACE framework (Section 2.2.2) with the CRM framework (Section 2.3)

MINDSPACE CRM Framework Framework

Messenger Acquisition, Extension

Incentives Acquisition, Retention, Extension Norms Acquisition, Extension

Defaults Acquisition

Salience Acquisition, Extension Priming Extension

Affect Acquisition Commitments Retention

Ego Retention

An overview of the framework alignment is provided in (Table 2). In summary, this shows that alignment between the MINDSPACE framework and the CRM framework are indeed relevant for all phases of the CRM framework, ex-cept for customer selection. Such a general alignment, which takes into account all CRM phases, ensures its functionality to support the complete customer lifecycle.

The framework alignment in particular shows that the be-havioural influences are predominantly present in the cus-tomer acquisition and extension phase. Since the cuscus-tomer

acquisition serves as an important first stepping stone for the development of a customer relationship, it is exactly in this phase that behavioural influences will have the most impact on the behaviour of prospects. Furthermore, gaining a better understanding of persuasive design in the acquisi-tion phase could provide a better understanding of how to further incorporate choice architecture for the subsequent phases in the CRM framework. As a result of such consid-erations, the choice has been made to only focus on the be-havioural influences applicable to the customer acquisition phase for the remaining sections. Since the applicability of the MINDSPACE framework within the CRM domain has been shown, the next step would be to identify design ele-ments with persuasive intentions as classified according to the framework.

4.

CASE STUDY BOOKING.COM

In order to identify persuasive design elements used in practice, a case study of the Booking.com website is con-ducted. Screenshots were taken for each page and subse-quently the relevant persuasive design elements have been classified according to the descriptions of the behavioural influences in Section 3. The case study comprises the cus-tomer journey of a prospect, who is interested to book for lodgings and therefore browses through the website to find information:

- UC-1: Finding a destination to go.

- UC-2: Comparing deals for a specific destination. - UC-3: Selecting a property for more information. - UC-4: Evaluating chosen property.

- UC-5a: Completing reservation for a property. - UC-5b: Deciding to view other properties instead. - UC-5c: Deciding to postpone reservation.

The case study has been conducted by following the steps of the customer journey3, which assumes that site visitors already have a goal to potentially make a purchase. The persuasive design elements in the case study does not dif-ferentiate between customer segments, and is therefore in line with the goal of the research to focus on the persuasive intentions of design elements in general. Thus, it can be assumed that the phase of customer selection will bear no

Figure 2: Behavioural influences for UC-2

3

Booking.com. https://www.booking.com/

influence on the behavioural change. The case study pri-marily focuses on how persuasive design is used to persuade prospects who have never been on the site before to follow and ultimately complete the customer journey. This there-fore requires the case study to be conducted with the focus on behavioural influences that are relevant for customer ac-quisition.

The results of the case study are shown in Figure 2 and Appendix A. As shown in the results, influences of messen-ger and norms are tightly connected to each other. The messenger is used within the design to emphasise that en-dorsements and reviews are provided by “travelers/guests like you”. Throughout the customer journey, information is provided about what other customers and experts think about the product/service in the form of verbal text and rat-ing scores. The constant emphasis on the messenger urges the visitor to trust the provided information. Information about what other customers deem as popular and positive, directs the attention to those properties, therefore leading the prospect to believe that those products are indeed the best and promoting a sense of belonging. The influence of norms also takes form as status information, which provides dynamic real-time information about the amount of people who are looking at a specific property, and the frequency of how many times a property has been booked in a short amount of time. This urges the visitor to deem the property as more interesting, since the greater the number of people who are interested in one product, the more likely it seems to be a good deal.

Incentives are used when the visitor is looking at destina-tions and when looking through deals, to encourage visitors to sign in for “secret deals”. Whenever a visitor decides to halt the reservation process, the visitor is once again wel-comed back and is informed about the ability to see “deals up to 50% off” when signed in. Incentives are also used to promote an easier customer experience, by being able to “book faster” when signed in. The aim is to persuade vis-itors to create an account for better prices and ease of use as incentives, with the purpose to convert prospects into a potential customers through engagement.

Likewise, salience is used with coloured banners to high-light the positive perks of a property, and to emphasise the price savings when used in combination with incentives (Fig-ure 2). The usage of salience directs the consumer’s atten-tion to what the company deems important when deciding whether to choose for a specific property, including facilities

and price discounts. The same salient information is repeat-edly shown when a visitor is comparing deals, when viewing a specific property, at the point of reserving, and as a form of reminder. The repetition of the salient information in-creases the visitor’s probability judgments, and hence mak-ing it easier for visitors to recall certain properties and re-member ‘how great the deal’ was. Even if a prospect has not yet decided to place an reservation, he/she will be reminded of particular properties by its price or price savings.

Additionally, defaults are mostly used as a form of de-scriptive terms to describe the “top reasons to visit” specific destinations (Figure 2). Descriptive terms urge for anchor-ing to take place. A visitor is able to distill familiar in-formation, and therefore relating a destination with certain images and expectations. This could lead the consumer to think that a specific destination fits what he/she was look-ing for. Furthermore, a selected list of properties is pre-sented as ‘top picks’. Visitors are more likely to look at the selected properties, and in particular those that are pre-sented in the highest order, even though they might not be aware of the criteria used.

Lastly, affect is used on the website to frame informa-tion to convey positivity and excitement, such as “wonderful” (Figure 2), “best value”, “nice pick”, and “jackpot”. Fram-ing emphasises the benefits, and thus nudgFram-ing people to feel optimistic about having found a good deal. Similarly, fram-ing is also used in status information to create a sense of urgency and scarcity. Words such as “just booked”, “today”, “high demand” and “limited supply”, and the presence of a timer serve as reminder for the fact that offers are limited, and subsequently urges the visitor for quick decision-making. Table 3: Identified MINDSPACE influences (Table 1) per

use case in case study Booking.com Use Case MINDSPACE 1 2 3 4 5a 5c Messenger 1 3 6 2 3 Incentives 2 2 2 2 1 Norms 3 6 12 2 7 Defaults 1 2 Salience 4 7 1 1 Affect 8 16 13

Overall, the case study revealed that persuasive design el-ements are indeed used on Booking.com. Table 3 provides an overview of which types of behavioural influences are used in the customer journey, by counting the unique types of design elements per use case. Particularly the influences of messen-ger, norms, salience and affect are most prevalent through-out the customer journey on the website. The influences of affect and norms are used in large numbers when selection and decision-making are most required. Remarkably, de-faults are only present at the beginning of the customer jour-ney. This shows that defaults are used when the customer has not yet narrowed down his/her selection. The results also show that design elements can contain a combination of behavioural influences; in particular messenger-norms and salience-incentives combinations were most frequent. Sim-ilar persuasive design elements were often repeated on all web pages that were part of the customer journey. This might imply that repetition of persuasion techniques could be impactful on the behaviour of prospects and customers.

Hypotheses

Subsequently, several hypotheses are derived from the ob-served case study.

H1: Prospects are likely to follow endorsed choices and re-views from other customers and experts.

H2: Emphasised cost savings and benefits attracts prospects to register and subscribe, and to complete the cus-tomer journey.

H3: Salient information directs the attention of prospects and attracts to complete the customer journey. H4: Prospects are more likely to limit themselves to the

default pre-selection.

H5: Emphasising urgency and scarcity increases compel-lence, and the speed of decision-making for prospects to complete the customer journey.

The derived hypotheses assert how each behavioural in-fluence takes form and the expected effects it has on the behaviour of prospects. In order to understand the effects of each individual behavioural influence, the hypotheses are required to be tested.

5.

A/B TESTING

Subsequently, an A/B testing is conducted to test and to compare the effects of each individual behavioural influence that are present during the customer acquisition phase. A total of 6 mockup websites variants are created, contain-ing a similar structure of steps in the customer journey as identified through the case study (Section 4). The testing environment consists of a control environment without the identified design elements (Figure 3), and a mockup varia-tion to include design elements from the case study for the 5 identified behavioural influences: incentives, messenger and norms, defaults, salience and affect. The complete overview of mockups can be found in (Appendix B). To gain more reliable results and for comparison of observations gained through the case study, the mockup website is designed sim-ilarly to Booking.com in the form of an e-commerce website that provides comparative search engine as a service. Conse-quently, the design elements that are included in the mockup variations are also based on the design elements as identified through the case study.

Figure 3: Mockup website with embedded survey Each hypothesis is tested by presenting participants with a task to go through the control website and one of the

maining website variations as a new consumer who is seek-ing to buy air tickets for a vacation. This ensures that ef-fects can be measured and analysed for explicitly one type of behavioural influence. In order to retain validity, possible order effects have been taken into account by alternating the sequence to either start with the control environment or one of the remaining mockup variants. Furthermore, the mockup variants were randomly distributed to participants through equal assignment of weights for redirection. The participant is allowed to decide whether to complete the en-tire customer journey or to halt the purchase halfway, and therefore refraining from skewing the test results.

To gain insights from the behaviour of test subjects, both quantitative and qualitative measurements are recorded. The test subject is presented with a survey (Appendix C) on each page/part of the customer journey, consisting of closed and open questions, in order to gain more in-depth insights on their reasons behind the observed behaviour. Similar ques-tions are presented with varying quesques-tions about the rele-vant design elements for a specific mockup variation. Fur-thermore, the questions are similar per step of the customer journey with the aim to observe a change in behaviour when furthering the customer journey. For the test sessions a test subject is considered as any consumer, and therefore no particular restrictions are made when acquiring the re-search sample group through random sampling. Based on the population size of 84.5 million yearly online bookings, a confidence level of 95% and a margin of error of 5%, an ideal sample size would consist of 385 participants. The eventual sample size of 80 in total leads to 11% margin of error.

6.

RESULTS

6.1

Data Analysis

The data of all website variants obtained through A/B testing were subjected to quantitative data analysis with aim to seek patterns in the behaviour of prospects within the customer acquisition phase. Rather than merely finding significant relations, this research aims to explore on how and why people react differently to persuasive design. The A/B testing received 104 responses in total. However, only 80 responses were included for data analysis, as 24 responses were found to be incomplete (only the first part of the sur-vey is covered). The age of the participants range between 16-67 years old, with a mode of 22 and a mean of 34.43 (SD = 13.779). In addition, a qualitative data analysis was conducted to link the reasons behind certain choices made by the participants. Each answer to the open questions had been coded using open and axial coding, which facilitates the identification of common core themes.

The data analysis is conducted using a 95% confidence interval. The Shapiro-Wilk test with a significance level at p < 0.05 shows that the values for the attractiveness, com-pellence, and income group follow a normal distribution, while the other values differ from a normal distribution. The complete test results are listed in Appendix D.

6.2

Comparison of Acquisition Rate

Firstly, to address the effects of each website variant on the acquisition of prospects, the amount of confirmed and halted purchases were compiled (Table 4). 67.5% of test sessions resulted in confirmed purchases, while the remain-ing 32.5% were halted purchases, of which 61.5% of

par-ticipants halted just before confirming the purchase. Since the amount of responses differs per stage of the customer journey depending on the amount of halted purchases, the following percentages are computed by taking the amount of responses on the relevant page as total. When compar-ing the acquisition rate for each variant, the most prospects were acquired with the incentives, salience and control version. The prospects’ age and income were examined for correlations with the amount of confirmed purchases, but no correlation has been found (Appendix D.1).

Table 4: Result customer journeys per website variation Variant Confirmed Halted Total* Control 20 (71.4%) 8 (28.6%) 28 Incentives 7 (87.5%) 1 (12.5%) 8 Messenger 5 (62.5%) 3 (37.5%) 8 Defaults 4 (50.0%) 4 (50.0%) 8 Salience 7 (77.8%) 2 (22.2%) 9 Affect 11 (57.9%) 8 (42.1%) 19 Total** 54 (67.5%) 26 (32.5%) 80 *Within each website variant. **For all variants. Reasons quoted for halted purchases before confirmation included wanting to compare with other booking sites first (31.3%), the expensive pricing (25%), and unsuitable flight details (18.8%). Alternatively, 2 out of the 16 responses for halting the purchase were related to the survey, e.g. “because the survey is taking too much time”. 10 out of 26 participants halted the purchase without filling in the last survey, and hence no explanations have been recorded.

In order to compare the effects of the behavioural influ-ences in each mockup variation, the participants have been asked to rank the level of attraction and compellence in a scale from 1 to 5. The attractiveness and compellence serve as measurements for the effectiveness of each website variant. The same question has been repeated thrice: (1) when the prospect is looking into a deal; (2) when reserving and (3) confirming a purchase, with the aim to detect any changes in perceived effects once the participant progresses towards the end of the customer journey. Firstly, a corre-lation test has been conducted to validate whether attrac-tiveness and compellence are indeed effective measurements for the acquisition rate. For this purpose, the mean of the total attractiveness and compellence has been computed for each website variation.

Table 5: Relation between attractiveness and compellence with the acquisition rate

Pearson correlation with total confirmed mean total attractiveness r = .997, p = .000

mean total compellence r = .998, p = .000

Both the level of attractiveness and compellence corre-lated with the amount of confirmed purchases (Table 5). When comparing the responses between the mockup vari-ants, it is clear that the price, presentation of information and selection, attractiveness of the design, and differenti-ation between deals and non-deals, were the core themes that influenced the attractiveness and compellence during the customer journey. Subsequently, a Mann-Whitney test

has been conducted to test whether the level of attractive-ness and compellence of the control website differs from each mockup variation (Appendix D.1).

Table 6: Comparison of attractiveness and compellence Mann-Whitney U with control version

attractiveness (incentives) U = 52.5, p = .038 attractiveness, compellence (salience) U = 28, p = .001

A higher attraction level has been found in the incentives version when prospects were looking into a deal. Similarly, for the same page of the customer journey, both a higher attraction and compellence level were in the salience ver-sion (Table 6). However, no relation has been found when compared to the other website variants.

6.3

Messenger and Norms

Subsequently, the influence of reviews was tested via the messenger and norms website variant. A scatter plot has been constructed with the level of attraction against the ranked influence of reviews when deciding on a destination to look into (on a scale of 1 to 5). The graph (Appendix D.2) shows no relation. 60% deemed the messenger and norms variant “trustworthy” and “reliable” enough to confirm a pur-chase. When asked about the influence of reviews, reasons provided included “to see all the positive and negative feed-back left behind by others based on their experience” and that it is “something I’d do after choosing a destination/after nar-rowing down my choice”. Important aspects of reviews con-cerned 75% of “the personal travel advice/reviews from other customers” and 40% of “knowing that the traveler reviews are verified”, with multiple answers allowed. Participant P44 stated that “it’s reassuring to see that it’s rated very well”, and that while the “verified reviews does sound more reliable and it would influence my choices positively”..“the number of verified reviews are so high, it seemed fake thus I didn’t really care for them”. Interestingly, P39 and P44 commented that he/she “don’t really care if people happen to be looking at the same deal or not”..“unless the tickets are almost sold out”, while P41 was “curious about what is happening right now, but I don’t think it is a good indication of a good flight”. Ad-ditionally, only 1 participant chose to click on a pre-selected destination since it “was highlighted as popular”, while only 1 out of the 8 participants chose to click on a link based solely on other’s reviews.

6.4

Incentives

When evaluating at the effects of incentives, the focus was on the effects of emphasised cost savings. Participants were asked to choose a design element out of all the elements they have seen, as the most and least deciding factor. The price was chosen by 65.8% as the most deciding factor for all mockup versions, whereas the airline company was chosen by 52.6% as the least deciding factor when looking into a deal (Appendix D.3). This does not change throughout the customer journey. As participants stated, “the cheaper, the better”, regardless of “what airline service brings me to my destination”. An additional Spearman’s rho test showed that the price indeed correlated with the decision of a participant to confirm a purchase (Table 7).

When looking at the incentives variant specifically, 57.1% were attracted to the price and discount, and in particular

Table 7: Relation between price and the acquisition rate Spearman’s rho correlation with total confirmed price as deciding factor rs = .928, p = .008

2 participants stated that the “discount and secret deals trig-gers the user”, and that “when you see a %-off offer you become interested to see what it has to offer”. Interest-ingly, P31 showed awareness for the persuasive intentions and mentioned not wanting “to be manipulated”. Further-more, when asked about the influence of knowing that it is a good deal, 66.7% stated that “it is more attractive, even though the price might be a little higher than a non-deal” and that it “make[s] me feel good and worth the money”. 2 par-ticipants (P36 and P31) were less convinced, stating that “percent discount is just a way to confuse people” and that it would work better “when I have a secret deal, or an offer or whatever customized”. The responses here contrast with the experience on the control website, wherein 26.7% indicated the difficulty to distinguish between deals and non-deals.

Regarding the effect of incentives on the amount of new registrations and subscriptions, only 2 participants regis-tered on the incentives variant, due to the “secret deals with dropped prices” and being “curious on other good deals”. Comparison to the control variant revealed no relation, when looking at the amount of new registrations (Appendix D.3). Subsequently, the registrations rate of all website variants were examined. Other registrations were only found for the control (1) and affect version (5). 22.5% would not register “unless it is really necessary” on the home page, and 25% wanted to wait until they have “really decided to pur-chase from this site”. Several participants, alternatively, ex-pressed their concerns for security issues (12.5%), not want-ing “to be bothered with advertisement”, and to avoid “un-wanted emails”. The same sentiment was shared when pro-gressing to the deals page.

6.5

Defaults

Alternatively, the effects of defaults were tested by ex-amining the participants’ search method and preference of selection sorting. Typing a city name was preferred by 74.7% of the participants (Appendix D.4), in comparison to clicking on a selection of photos with destinations. Participants in particular preferred to use the search bar due to the avail-ability of more options and the efficiency to type. 11.3% of all participants chose for a destination with photo be-cause it was “more attractive with pictures”. 35% of all responses considered whether the search method matched their goals as an important consideration when choosing a search method. They chose the search bar since they already had a specific destination in mind, which was not portrayed in the photos. Moreover, when looking at the responses to-wards pre-selected descriptions in the defaults variant, P45 mentioned “the descriptions made it more compelling” as an-other reason to click on a photo destination. P45 also men-tioned that the provided ‘top reasons to visit’ “persuaded..to consider said destination”, yet only 25% of the participants looked at the “top reasons to visit”.

Specifically for the defaults version, the ability to sort the selection of deals was added, which was used by 87.5% of the participants. 37.5% of the participants deemed the ability to sort the selection of deals as “useful”, while 25% did not see the added value of sorting since there is “less

selection, so no need to sort” and had “more concern about the price”. P45, in particular, showed awareness for the per-suasive intentions by stating that “the top picks are usually chosen to persuade the customer to buy the more expensive services/products”, while P48 also questioned the criteria on which the top picks was based on.

6.6

Salience

Subsequently, the effects of salience were addressed by looking at the influence of emphasised presentation of infor-mation. 87.5% ranked the attractiveness and compellence positively (ranked 3-5) for the salience variant, resulted from an increased attractiveness of discounts (Appendix D.5) and deals due to usage of colours, “shouty discount banners”, and the “pop-up deals made it more catchy”. Moreover, the fact that “the offer is only today” also played a role, i.e. “..it helped a little that the discount seemed temporarily”.

6.7

Affect

Lastly, influences of affect design elements were exam-ined. In order to measure the behaviour towards urgency and scarcity, the level of compellence and the duration were recorded. An approximate duration spent on the customer journey was computed for each participant through compar-ison between the starting and end time of a survey response. (Appendix D.6) shows that the affect, incentives and de-faults variant, required the least amount of time to com-plete. In contrast, the longest time was spent on the control website. However, no relation was found for both the level of compellence and the duration when compared to the con-trol website. Interestingly, when looking at the responses, P69 of the affect variant stated that “someone just booked feels like a trap and kinda misleading/suspicious”, and that he/she “stopped at the page with an alert box, that made it feel kinda fishy and decided not to purchase from the web-site”. Moreover, when looking at the responses for the em-phasis on the limited availability of offers, no mention has been made, which contrasts with the salience variant.

7.

DISCUSSION

The testing sessions provided both quantitative and qual-itative data for analysis and hypotheses evaluation. This allows to examine the effects of each behavioural influences during the customer acquisition phase. A statistical test has shown that an increase in perceived attractiveness and com-pellence, does indeed increases the likelihood for prospects to complete the customer journey, resulting in a higher acqui-sition rate. These factors are subsequently used to evaluate the effectiveness of the behavioural influences. The statis-tical significance was not always obtainable, as the limited sample size was stretched thinly among the 6 website vari-ants. Nevertheless, the obtained data still provide sufficient indicators for the effects of the behavioural influences of mes-senger and norms, incentives, defaults, salience and affect.

7.1

Evaluating Hypotheses

Messenger and Norms

The behavioural influences of messenger and norms were tested through the addition of personal reviews and feedback from other customers and staff. While the initial assump-tion was that prospects would be more attracted to follow the customer journey due to endorsed choices and reviews,

no relation has been found. Nonetheless, comparison of the collected data revealed a theme of trustworthiness and reli-ability, which has only been mentioned with the presence of verified reviews and personal travel advice from other cus-tomers. This finding is also in accordance with the nudge theory (Section 2.2.2). The participants valued the impor-tance of reviews to judge the trustworthiness of the website and used the personal experience from other customers to help narrow down their choices. An aspect to consider is that how the information is presented also influences the credi-bility of reviews, since an unrealistic amount of reviews can cause distrust from prospects. This indicates that prospects cope with such persuasion by responding through evalua-tion of what he/she believes in, which is also in line with the Persuasion Knowledge Model (Section 2.2.3).

All in all, no significant evidence has been found for design elements of messenger and norms to directly influence the acquisition rate. Alternatively, emphasis on the personal feedback from other customers can guide prospects to make a choice when presented with a selection of offers.

Incentives

To address the behavioural influences of incentives, cost sav-ings and other benefits have been emphasised. The assump-tion was that prospects would be more attracted to register and subscribe, and to complete the customer journey. First of all, the total amount of new registrations and subscrip-tions for all variants combined were relatively low in general. While the promise of secret deals in the incentives version did succeed in persuading prospects to register for an ac-count, the large majority of the participants were only will-ing to register out of necessity once they have decided to commit to the website. A possible explanation is that the curiosity of a possible secret deals is not enough to persuade prospects to give up their personal information when weigh-ing in the inconvenience and concerns for security issues.

The emphasis of cost savings, on the other hand, was found to positively influence the attractiveness to complete the customer journey; the highest acquisition rate has been recorded for the incentives version. As shown in the results, the price is a decisive factor that influences the decision to confirm a purchase. Due to the emphasis of discounts and se-cret deals in the incentives variant, prospects were triggered and became more interested in certain offers. Furthermore, the importance is emphasised to present price adequately to distinguish between deals and non-deals. In conclusion, emphasis of cost savings can indeed be employed to increase attractiveness and ultimately act as a persuasive influence for prospects to complete the customer journey.

Salience

Similarly, the behavioural influences of salience were tested with an emphasis on cost savings through usage of colours and flashy design elements to highlight offers information. The assumption was that salient information is able to di-rect the attention of prospects and attract to complete the customer journey. The results have shown that salient in-formation did indeed positively influenced the perceived at-tractiveness and compellence. Furthermore, the second most highest acquisition rate was recorded for the salience variant. An explanation, as provided by the nudge theory, is that the usage of colours helps to make the price and discounts more apparent and “catchy”, and therefore also effectively help

prospects to align their goal to find good deals for less price. Similarly, the urge to buy is increased due to the highlighted words such as ‘today’ and ‘deal of the day’, which influenced the judgments of prospects due to the temporary offer.

Overall, the results showed an indication for the positive influence of salient information, in the form of colours and flashy banners, to increase the perceived attractiveness and compellence to complete the customer journey.

Defaults

The behavioural influences of defaults were subsequently tested with the assumption that prospects are likely to limit themselves to the default pre-selection. This hypothesis en-tails the search method and the ability for participants to sort the selection of offers. A comparison of used search method showed that, contrary to the prior assumption, the majority of prospects preferred to use the search bar when selecting a destination as compared to clicking on a pre-selected destination with photo. The decision to use a search method was based on whether it is able to satisfy their goal and whether the photos were attractive enough to evoke their curiosity. Therefore, a selected destination pre-sented in the form of a photo is considered more efficient and attractive if it matched the destination the prospect had in mind or if the prospect is undecided.

Similarly, the ability to sort the selection was deemed use-ful depending on whether the prospect perceived an added value in doing so. As supported by the nudge theory, peo-ple tend to take the option that requires the less effort, but the results also indicate that prospects are willing to divert from the default course if they have something to gain from it, such as the ability to sort by price. The defaults vari-ant also recorded the lowest acquisition rate, with an equal distribution between the amount of confirmed and halted purchases. This indicates that while a default pre-selection can potentially help prospects to browse through the website more efficiently, it does not seem to increase the perceived attractiveness and compellence. Consequently, no indica-tion has been found for the likelihood of prospects to limit themselves to the default pre-selection. Whether a prospect decides to choose default options depends on their judgments of effectiveness for achieving their goals.

Affect

Lastly, the behavioural influences of affect was tested. The hypotheses assert that emphasising urgency and scarcity in-creases compellence. While the mean duration spent on the affect variant was one of the least among the variants, no re-lation has been found when compared to the control website. Furthermore, the acquisition rate for the affect variant is also the second lowest among all variants. The results show that the perceived attractiveness and compellence decreased fur-ther in the customer journey, even though more affect design elements are shown. A few prospects even felt suspicious and unsafe due to the trigger reminder to complete the purchase. An explanation could be that such triggers and framing of words were perceived as ‘pushy’ by the participants, and therefore negatively influenced their emotional responses to-wards the website. Considering that words such as ‘offer of the day’ and ‘today’ did helped to promote a sense of ur-gency for the salient variant, it might indicate that affect influences should be combined with salient influences for a more attractive presentation of scarcity persuasion.

All in all, it is not possible to indicate that design elements of affect influences are able to persuade prospects to follow through with the customer journey. Furthermore, a possible aspect to consider is that the presentation of affect design elements should be carefully chosen to avoid annoyance and distrust from prospects.

7.2

Coping with Persuasion

An interesting aspect that emerged from the obtained results is that prospects, who were aware of the persua-sive intentions of the website, were more sceptical and crit-ical with their judgments for decision-making. As asserted by the Persuasive Knowledge Model, how people react and cope with persuasive design elements depends on their own goals. Decision-making in the CRM domain is, however, much more price- and goals-oriented, as shown by the re-sults. Comparison of the results show that prospects con-sider similar decision factors and core themes when pro-gressing through the customer journey. Although the per-ceived attractiveness and compellence do change depending on what type of persuasive design elements are shown, the prospect still consider the same core themes to make judg-ments for decision-making. This provides an indication for the ability of prospects to align the perceived persuasive de-sign element with their own goals.

Therefore, it should be recognised that awareness of per-suasive intentions also plays a role during decision-making in the CRM domain, and that the effectiveness of persuasive design will largely depend on how prospects perceive a de-sign element to be matching with their current goal to find the most suitable and cost-effective deal.

8.

CONCLUSION

In conclusion, with regard to the research question: ‘What are the effects of persuasive design for CRM customer ac-quisition?’, the research has shown that usage of design el-ements based on the behavioural influences of the MIND-SPACE framework do affect how prospects perceive the at-tractiveness and compellence when following the customer journey. In particular, the behavioural influences of incen-tives and salience provided indication for an increased ac-quisition rate of new prospects, and have shown their effec-tiveness as an persuasive influence to navigate through and complete the customer acquisition phase. Moreover, coping with persuasive design in a CRM domain manifested as a means of guidance to narrow down the selection for unde-cided prospects, and as a means for alignment of goals.

While not all effects of the behavioural influences have been proven, the research has shown that behavioural influ-ences are indeed applicable in the CRM domain, and could especially prove to be a powerful tool in the customer acqui-sition phase.

9.

FUTURE WORK

9.1

Expanding the Research Scope

Since the research has provided indication of how prospects would behave to the behavioural influences, the next step would be to conduct a follow-up research with a larger sam-ple size in a more realistic setting to further validate whether the observed effects also occur within a large population. Furthermore, while this research focused on the task of

ing, it would be interesting to expand the scope to other e-commerce related task in order to examine how behaviours would differ depending on the nature of the task.

9.2

Additional Factors

For this research, the level of attractiveness and compel-lence were used as indicators for the willingness of prospects to progress with the customer journey. The results have however shown that other factors, such as the trustwor-thiness, could also influence the decision-making process of prospects. Therefore, it would be interesting to conduct fur-ther research and testing with more relevant factors.

9.3

Effects on Other CRM Phases

While the research focused on the effects of the MIND-SPACE framework for the acquisition phase, the research also proposed the applicability of the framework for the en-tire customer life cycle. A further step would be to investi-gate how persuasive design elements differ when presented in a difference stage of the CRM framework. Further research would allow for comparison of the behavioural influences within the different stages, and to gain a better understand-ing of how the effects could change with a more developed relationship with a website.

10.

ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS

I would especially like to thank Frank Nack for his guid-ance and patience as my supervisor. Additionally, I would also like to thank all the participants who were willing to spare their time to be involved in this research.

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APPENDIX

A.

CASE STUDY BOOKING.COM

Figure 5: Behavioural influences for UC-1

Figure 7: Behavioural influences for UC-2

Figure 10: Behavioural influences for UC-3

Figure 12: Behavioural influences for UC-3

Figure 15: Behavioural influences for UC-5

Figure 17: Behavioural influences for UC-5

Figure 18: Behavioural influences for UC-5b

B.

A/B TESTING MOCKUPS

B.1

Control Environment

Figure 20: Control environment with embedded survey without any persuasive design elements

Figure 21: Control environment page with general deals for a specific city

Figure 22: Control environment page presenting offers for a specific airline

Figure 23: Control environment page to place a purchase order

B.2

Variation: Messenger and Norms

Figure 24: Mockup variation with messenger and norms design elements

Figure 25: Presenting deals with messenger and norms design elements

Figure 26: Presenting airline ticket offers with messenger and norms design elements

Figure 27: Confirming purchase order with messenger and norms design elements