Berger, J. (2013). Contagious: Why Things Catch On. New York, NY: Simon & Schuster. Jonah Berger, a Wharton associate marketing professor, uses social science in illuminating the phenomena of viral content, contagious stories and popular brands. By combining his research work with powerful stories, he talks about six basic principles that drive contagiousness in consumer products, policy initiatives, and YouTube videos, among others. These principles include ‘social currency’, ‘triggers’, ‘emotion’, ‘public’, ‘practical value’ and ‘stories’ - which he put together to create the acronym STEPPS. Berger proves through data, specific examples, and his very own experiences that these principles have worked in pushing forward ideas and creating attitude change that has resulted to the numerous success of brands. Applying the Elaboration Likelihood Model into his proposition leads to the realization that five of the six principles he proposes may fall under the peripheral route. According to the theory, the peripheral route focuses on the executional variable of communication. The following principles seem to focus on that: ‘social currency’, ‘triggers’, ‘emotion’, ‘public’, and ‘stories’. …show more content…
‘Triggers’ talk about associating a product with ideas and activities in people’s lives in order to generate short term and long term word-of-mouth. ‘Emotion’ focuses on evoking ‘awe’ from receivers by providing inspiring knowledge, beauty and sublimity. ‘Public’ emphasizes on imitation and how making visible and copyable campaigns spread from one person to another. Lastly, the principle of ‘stories’ talks about packaging the product in a narrative that is shareable and relatable to