MCB-20806 Principles of
Consumer Studies
Lecture 2: Attitudes
Attitudes
“A learned predisposition to respond in a consistently favourable or unfavourable fashion in
relation to some object” (Szmigin & Piacentini, 2018)
“A person’s evaluation (evaluative summary) of an object (on a favourable to unfavourable
continuum)” (Albarracin & Shavitt, 2018; Bohner & Dickel, 2011)
Function
- Functional perspective
o Stable
o Saved in memory
When you see an object, your attitude towards it is retrieved from your
memory
o Serve general functions
- Constructive perspective
o Temporary
o Dependent on context
o Serve specific goals
Functional perspective
- Knowledge function: attitudes are formed as a result of a need for structure. They can
help to organize knowledge
- Utilitarian function: attitudes are formed on whether the product provides pleasure or
pain
- Value-expressive function: attitudes express the consumer’s central values or self-
concept
- Ego-defensive function: attitudes protect the person from external threats or internal
feelings
An attitude can serve more than one function. Marketers identify the dominant function to
base their ads on. Attitudes may differ between people, so marketers use strategies that
will appeal to different customer segments. The functional perspective doesn’t cover
‘hurry’ decisions.
Constructive perspective
Attitudes depend on:
- Effort: people don’t like to put a lot of effort in things
- Salient: more aspects are important, but the salient aspect has a lot of influence (car
color).
- Context: complex or easy choice situation, existence of other options, presentation or
the options
,Forming
Expectancy-value theory = cognitive beliefs from memory x evaluation
ABC-model
An attitude has three elements: Affect (feelings towards object), behaviour (intentions to do
something related to the object), and cognition (beliefs about the object). The
importance of these elements depend on people’s level of motivation, and can be
explained in the hierarchy of effects:
1. The standard learning hierarchy or high-involvement hierarchy: consumers first form
beliefs, then form feelings, and then engage in the behavior (think -> feel -> do)
(cognition -> affect -> behaviour). The attitude is based on cognitive information
processing.
2. The low-involvement hierarchy: the consumer has limited knowledge, and forms an
evaluation after the product has been purchased or used (do -> feel -> think) (behaviour -
> affect -> cognition). The involvement paradox refers to the fact that the less important
the product is to consumers, the bigger the importance of marketing stimuli is. Free
samples are an example of this hierarchy. The attitude is based on behavioral learning
processes.
3. The experiential hierarchy: consumers act on basis of their emotions (feel -> think -> do /
feel -> do -> think) (affect -> cognition -> behaviour / affect -> behaviour -> cognition).
The mood they are when they are at the store, or the product package, influences the
chances of buying the product. This often concerns expressive or sensory objects (objects
that you need to feel, hear or taste), with which you have a direct experience. An
example is impulse shopping. The attitude is based on hedonic consumption.
Theory of planned behaviour
The theory of planned behaviour is a conceptual framework that predicts and understands
particular social behaviours in specified contexts. It helps to understand how attitudes
influence specific behaviours and consumer decisions.
- Predicting behaviour
o
o Theory of planned behaviour differs from theory of reasoned action, because of
its addition of perceived behavioral control (= people’s perception of the ease or
difficulty of performing the behaviour, which varies across situations and actions.
, o The individuals intention to perform a given behaviour, together with the
perceived behavioral control, can be used directly to predict actual behaviour.
- Predicting intentions
o There are three independent determinants of intention: the attitude towards the
behaviour, the subjective norm (perceived social pressure to perform behaviour),
and the degree of perceived behavioral control. The relative importance of these
factors varies across behaviours and situations.
Role of beliefs in behaviour
Beliefs are non-evaluative. Attitudes contain beliefs and subjective evalution
Theory of planned behaviour assumes that beliefs are the determinants of behaviour. There
are three kinds of beliefs: behavioral beliefs (influences attitude toward the behaviour),
normative beliefs (influences subjective norms), and control beliefs (influences perceived
behavioral control).
- Behavioral beliefs
o Attitude = strength of belief x evaluation
- Normative beliefs
o Subjective norm = the strength of each normative belief x the motivation to
comply with the referent in question
- Control beliefs
o Perceived behavioral control = perceived power of the particular control factor x
control belief
Functional perspective
- Expectancy-value model
- Theory of planned behaviour
- ABC model of attitudes
Constructive perspective
- For limited time, or limited effort. In those cases you form attitudes via
automatic/intuitive processing. Here you can deal with important decisions. This is an
important part of the dual-process theory.
- Using your senses makes something easier to remember. So, that makes the forming of
your attitude stronger.
Changing
Functional perspective
- Never change
- Strong attitudes (are stable)
- Attitude change = change in memory representation
- Attitude change = form a new attitude, old attitude = label “false” (PAST model)
- PAST model
Constructive perspective
- Always change
- Weak attitudes (depend on context)
- Attitude change = different set of info activated
, The elaboration likelihood model (ELM)
Three independent variables which are crucial to the ELM model, are message-processing
involvement, argument strength and source characteristics. This model starts with
communication (source, message, channel), and from there, two routes can be taken:
1. The central route: consumers find the information in the message relevant, and go
through high-involvement processing. After that, they generate a cognitive response.
Then their beliefs and attitudes change, and at last their behaviour changes.
2. The peripheral route: there is low involvement processing, after which first the beliefs
change, then behaviour changes, and then attitude changes. Consumers are likely to use
peripheral cues (sources of information extraneous to the actual message content) in
composing their attitude.
Embodied cognition
The idea that the body contributes to the acquisition, change, and use of attitudes.
Evaluative conditioning
An observed change in the liking of a stimulus that results from pairing this stimulus with
another, liked or disliked stimulus”
APE model
the associative-propositional evaluation model
