Economics, 3rd Edition

The Representativeness Heuristic 

In this instance people tend to make judgements by comparing how 

representative something is to an image or stereotype that they hold. For example, people may be more 

prepared to pay money to buy a lottery ticket if a close friend has just won a reasonable amount of money 

on the lottery or make an association that if Bose headphones, for example, are good quality then its home 

theatre systems are also going to be good quality.

Persuasion Heuristics 

These are linked to various attributes that a consumer attaches to a product or a 

brand. For example, it has been shown that size does matter to consumers and so marketers can exploit 

this by making more exaggerated claims in adverts or using facts and figures to make the product more 

compelling in the mind of the consumer. The more that the marketers can highlight the positive attributes of 

their product (and the negative ones of their rivals) the more likely consumers are to make choices in favour 

of their product. In addition, consumers are also persuaded by people they like and respect. This may be util-

ized by firms through the people they use in adverts and celebrity endorsements but may also be important 

in terms of the people a firm employs to represent them in a sales or marketing capacity. It may also be 

relevant in cases where friends or colleagues talk about products and is one of the reasons why firms are 

keen to build a better understanding of how social media like Facebook and Twitter can be exploited.

Persuasion heuristics can also manifest themselves in the ‘bandwagon’ effect – if a large number of people 

go and see a movie and rave about it then there is even more incentive for others to go and see it as well. 

Firms may look to try and create a bandwagon effect to utilize this persuasion heuristic in their marketing.