Developing a balanced and measured understanding of an idea is crucial if you want people to take your point of view seriously...

Wesley Shrum coined the term Status Bargain in 1996, in a study on the role of art critics in the individual's formation of cultural opinions. Shrum's research showed that individuals would modify their opinion to take on board the opinion of a critic in order to achieve greater status by being able to discuss the subject more comprehensively. The Status Bargain, therefore, involves recognising that you can improve what you know about a subject by considering the opinions that other people have on it. You then make an informed decision as to which elements of each person's ideas to absorb into your own thinking and which to leave out.

Put (over) simply consumers of tabloids know what they like: consumers of broadsheets are prepared to enter into a discussion about what they should like, even if in fact they don't like it. Robert Dawson Scott, Bridging The Cultural Gap
We believe this idea can be extended to the subject of general peer-to-peer influence and word of mouth. Status Bargains are regularly made over all forms of information. We have all at some point altered our point of view on hearing the opinion of someone who we perceive to be more of an expert on the subject being discussed. We do this because there is usually little to be gained from assuming that we're always right, and we'll find out more if we accept that there is more to find out.

The qualitative stage of our study showed that most people felt that when this tendency to pay attention to other people's points of view when developing an opinion was exhibited in others, it made them a more trustworthy source. Why? Because that person's point of view represented an edited version of a number of different positions. Having already done all the hard work they were able to make informed recommendations based on a range of different viewpoints.

In other words, we see people who make Status Bargains as being a filter of multiple opinions. They present us with an edited consensus view and we know that what they say is based on a broad range of knowledge. So, when they come to us with a recommendation about something like a car or a holiday destination, we know that they will have really considered a lot of different points of view on it. This in turn means that we can trust what they say, and that their advice should probably carry some weight when we decide to make our purchase decision. They are therefore key players in the word of mouth process.



So why is Status Bargaining such a persuasive form of behaviour to others?

Anna Rafferty, Digital Marketing Director of Penguin explains:


'If a person is able to take on a new recommendation, that's the person you feel has actually thought about what they're saying, rather than someone who says, 'I only like books by Dan Brown'. That doesn't carry a lot of kudos because you haven't got the breadth of knowledge to actually influence.'