Intercultural Communication

This qualitative study investigates the persuasive strategies employed in 100 textual advertisements on OpenSooq, a major online sales platform in Jordan. Guided by Beebe and Beebe’s (2013) model of persuasive communication, the analysis examines how credibility, emotional, and logical appeals are discursively realized in Jordanian digital contexts. Using thematic coding supported by ATLAS.ti, the findings show a marked preference for credibility-enhancing strategies (60.4%), followed by emotional appeals (37.4%), whereas logical reasoning (2.2%) remains marginal. These patterns reveal that persuasion in Jordanian online advertising reflects a value-driven communicative culture that prioritizes trust ‘thiqa’, sincerity, and interpersonal harmony over rational argumentation. By linking rhetorical strategy with cultural pragmatics, the study demonstrates how global persuasive models are re-contextualized within Arabic digital marketplaces, thereby offering new insights into the intersection of language, culture, and persuasion in the Arab world.