Goal Seeker and Persuasion Sentry: How Consumer Targets Respond to Interpersonal Marketing Persuasion

This article investigates how consumers respond to influence attempts by interpersonal marketing agents such as salespeople and service personnel. We conceptualize the consumer target as a goal-directed individual who attempts to manage a marketing interaction. Three qualitative data sets reveal 15 response strategies reflecting targets who are both goal seekers (i.e., attempting to utilize the agent to achieve own goals) and persuasion sentries (i.e., guarding against unwanted marketing persuasion). The target-agent relationship and the target's experience with persuasion emerge as factors that affect strategy use. An experimental study supports the proposition that the target-agent relationship interacts with persuasion experience to affect strategy usage.