Efficacy of Canvassing in Executive Search: A Comparison of Some Compliance Techniques

What is it about?

Social psychology has documented a large set of communication strategies aimed at changing a target person’s attitude or behavior toward the goals of the communicator. Persuasion research has paid special attention to the so-called compliance techniques (Cialdini, 2009) designed to make a person agree to the request of another person. Three of these techniques, namely, foot-in-the-door (FITD), door-in-the-face (DITF), and hard-to-get (HGT), are applied to a new field, that is, canvassing candidates by phone in the area of executive search. In a field experiment with 128 potential job candidates we tested whether these compliance techniques were more efficient than a standard telephone interview that made no use of these techniques. Results showed a moderate general advantage of the compliance techniques over the standard interview. FITD generated the highest compliance rates of the candidates, followed by HTG and then DITF. Beside theoretical considerations, practical implications of the results are discussed for telephone marketing in profit and nonprofit sectors. Keywords: Compliance, persuasion, communication techniques, foot-in-the-door, door-in-the-face, hard-to-get, canvassing, executive search

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Photo by Dima Pechurin on Unsplash

Photo by Dima Pechurin on Unsplash

Why is it important?

Practical implications of the results are discussed for telephone marketing in profit and nonprofit sectors.