Definition
In advertising, a hard sell is an advertisement or campaign that uses a more direct, forceful, and overt sales message. This approach is the diametric counterpart of a soft sell.
Hard Sell
What is ‘Hard Sell’
Advertising and sales practices denoted by aggressive or forceful language. A hard sell is designed to get a consumer to purchase a good or service in the short-term, rather than evaluate his or her options and potentially decide to wait on the purchase. It is considered a high-pressure technique.
Explaining ‘Hard Sell’
Determining whether to use a hard sell technique versus a soft sell technique, in which a campaign is more subtle in the delivery of its message, may come down to the type of product being sold and the type of person it is being advertised to. A hard sell technique used to sell a car, for example, might focus on the limited availability of the particular model, how other people are waiting to purchase the vehicle and how prices might increase if the consumer walks off the lot.
Further Reading
- Why is the scholarship of teaching and learning such a hard sell? – www.tandfonline.com [PDF]
- Brand Australia: half-truths for a hard sell – www.tandfonline.com [PDF]
- Global consumer culture positioning: testing perceptions of soft-sell and hard-sell advertising appeals between US and Japanese consumers – journals.sagepub.com [PDF]
- Measuring soft-sell versus hard-sell advertising appeals – www.tandfonline.com [PDF]
- Renewable energy technology: An urgent need, a hard sell – search.proquest.com [PDF]
- America's Hard Sell – search.proquest.com [PDF]
- Micro-finance evangelism,'destitute women', and the hard selling of a new anti-poverty formula – www.tandfonline.com [PDF]
- Clinical performance measurement—a hard sell – jamanetwork.com [PDF]
- Hard Sell: Advertising, Affluence and Transatlantic Relations, c. 1951–1969 – www.tandfonline.com [PDF]
