Chapter 8: Attitudes and persuasive communications
The power of attitudes:
- Attitude: a lasting, general evaluation of people (including oneself), objects, advertisements, or
issues
anything towards which we can have an attitude: attitude object
attitude is lasting because it tends to endure over time
It is general because it applies to more than a momentary event, such as hearing a loud noise,
though you might, over time, develop a negative attitude toward all loud noises
example: attitude towards how often someone should brush their teeth, or how high the tip for
the waiter should be
Attitudes help to determine whom you choose to date, what music you listen to, whether you will
recycle aluminum cans, or whether you choose to become a consumer researcher for a living
Functional theory of attitudes: explains how attitudes facilitate social behavior (attitudes exist
because they serve some function for the person
Different attitude functions:
Utilitarian function: relates to the basic principles of reward and punishment we learned about
in Chapter 4
we create attitude towards something/someone because it provides pleasure or pain
Value-expressive function: relates to the consumer’s self-concept or central values
people form attitudes because it says something about him or her as a person
highly relevant for psychographic analysis
Ego-defensive function: Attitudes we form to protect ourselves either from external threats or
internal feelings (example: deodorant that protects us against underarm odor in public)
Knowledge function: we form attitudes because we need order, structure or meaning
applies when a person is in an ambiguous situation (“it’s okay to wear casual pants to work,
but only on Friday”) or when he/she confronts a new product
The ABC model of attitudes:
- the heart, head and wallet!
heart: love owners share / head: ads / wallet: how to pay for the product
- Attitude has three component:
Affect: describes how a person feels towards an object
Behavior: The actions he/she takes towards the object (or the intentions)
Cognition: what he or she believes to be true about the attitude object
- ABC model emphasizes the interrelationships among knowing, feeling, and doing
We can’t determine consumers’ attitudes toward a product if we just identify their cognitions
(beliefs) about it
Hierarchy of Effects:
Which comes first: knowing, feeling, or doing? It turns out that each element may lead things off,
depending on the situation
Hierarchy of effects: explain the relative impact of the three components
High-involvement hierarchy: think feel do
a person approaches a product decision as a problem-solving process: person is highly involved
very motivated to seek out information and carefully weigh alternatives
, Low-involvement hierarchy: Think do feel
assumes that the consumer initially doesn’t have
a strong preference for one brand over another;
instead, he or she acts on the basis of limited
knowledge and forms an evaluation only after he
or she has bought the product
The attitude is likely to come about through
behavioral learning, as good or bad experiences
reinforce his or her initial choice
not much effort in comparing the potential
purchases
Experiential hierarchy:
Act on the basis of our emotional reactions: highlights the idea that intangible products
attributes (e.g. advertising, brand name, etc.) can help shape our attitudes toward a brand
we may base these reactions on hedonic motivations
- emotional contagion: messages that happy people deliver enhance our attitude toward the
product
How do we form attitudes:
- we simply may form an attitude toward a brand as a result of classical conditioning: A marketer
repeatedly pairs an attitude object such as the Pepsi name with a catchy jingle
- we can form an attitude because of instrumental conditioning (marketer reinforces us when we
consume the attitude object
- we can form an attitude through a cognitive process (example: model the behavior of friends or
celebs)
All attitudes are not created equal:
Consumers vary in their commitment to an attitude; the degree of commitment relates to their level
of involvement with the attitude object:
Compliance: the lowest level of involvement: we form an attitude because it helps us to gain
rewards or avoid punishment
This attitude is superficial; it is likely to change when others no longer monitor our behavior or
when another option becomes available
Identification: occurs when we form an attitude to conform to another person’s or group’s
expectations
Internalization: high level of involvement: deep-seated attitudes become part of our value
system these attitudes are difficult to change for us because they are so important!
The consistency principle: we value harmony among our thoughts, feelings, behaviors, and a need to
maintain uniformity among these elements to motivate us
This desire means that, if necessary, we change our thoughts, feelings, or behaviors to make them
consistent with other experiences
Principle reminds us of the fact that we don’t form attitudes in a vacuum
discounts are more effective for hedonic purchases than for utilitarian purchases
Principle is related to cognitive dissonance theory (see chapter 5)
when a person is confronted with inconsistencies among attitudes or behaviors, he or she will
take some action to resolve this “dissonance”
, According to the theory, our motivation to reduce the negative feelings of dissonance makes us
find a way for our beliefs and feelings to fit together
theory focusses on situations when 2 cognitive elements clash (“I love to smoke” and “smoking
causes cancer”)
creates discomfort for this person this psychological inconsistency
we are more likely to observe dissonance in high-involvement situations where there is more
pressure to reduce inconsistencies
We reduce dissonance when we eliminate, add, or change elements
Dissonance theory can help to explain why evaluations of a product tend to increase after we buy
the product (post purchase dissonance)
- implication for this phenomenon: consumers actively seek support for their decisions so they
can justify them
Self-perception theory: provides alternative explanations of dissonance effects
It assumes that we observe our own behavior to determine just what our attitudes are, much as
we assume that we know what another person’s attitude is when we watch what he does
we maintain consistency as we infer that we must have a positive attitude toward an object if
we have bought or consumed it!
this theory helps to explain foot-in-the-door-technique: : They know that consumers are more
likely to comply with a big request if they agree to a smaller one first (sales people put their foot
between the door so that the door doesn’t get slammed in their face)
Balance theory: considers how people perceive relations among different attitude objects, and how
they alter their attitudes so that these remain consistent (or “balanced”)
involves relations among three elements, so we call the resulting attitude structure triads
Each triad contains (1) a person and his or her perceptions of (2) an attitude object and (3) some
other person or object
we want relations among elements in a triad to be harmonious: if they are unbalanced, it creates
tension that we want to restore to get balance again
we link elements in two ways:
Unit relation: we think that a person is somehow connected to an attitude object (something like
a belief) example: getting married/divorced gives a positive/negative unit relation
Sentiment relation: a person expresses liking or disliking for an attitude object example: a
dating couple has a positive sentiment relation
Example: A woman who dislikes men in earrings has to resolve a state of imbalance if she wants
to date a guy who wears one
Balance theory reminds
us that when we have balanced perceptions, our attitudes also are likely to be stable. However, when
we experience inconsistencies, we also are more likely to change our attitudes. Balance theory helps
explain why consumers like to be linked to positively valued objects
, This “balancing act” is at the heart of Celebrity endorsements, in which marketers hope that the
star’s popularity will transfer to the product or when a non-profit organization recruits a celeb to
discourage harmful activities
Remember: creating a unit relation between a product and a star can backfire if the public’s
opinion of the celebrity endorser shifts from positive to negative
Attitude Models: Specify the different elements that might work together to influence people’s
evaluations of attitude objects
Multi-attribute attitude models: consumers’ attitude toward an attitude object (Ao) depends on
the beliefs they have about several of its attributes
- Our beliefs (accurate or not) about a product often are key to how we evaluate it
basic multi-attribute models contain three elements:
- Attributes are characteristics of the Ao
- Beliefs are cognitions about Ao
- Importance weights reflect the relative priority of an attribute to the consumer
Most influential multi-attribute model: Fishbein model
measures three components of attitudes:
When we combine these three elements, we
compute a consumer’s overall attitude toward
an object
We obtain the overall attitude score (A) when
we multiply consumers’ rating of each
attribute for all the brands they considered by
the importance rating for that attribute
Marketing applications of the multi attribute model (to improve your image)
Capitalize on relative advantage
Strengthen perceived product/attribute linkages
Add a new attribute
Influence competitor’s ratings
Do attitudes predict behavior:
in many cases: NO!
to improve its predictive ability: theory of reasoned action (newer version of Fishbein model)
Intentions versus behavior:
It is helpful to distinguish between attitudes we hold firmly and those that are more superficial,
especially because a person who holds an attitude with greater conviction is more likely to act on it
additions to Fishbein model:
- Normative influence can result in a contradiction between what we say we will do and what we
actually do when the moment of truth arrives
- Subjective norm: the effects of what we believe other people think we should do
two factors used to measure SN: (1) the intensity of a normative belief (NB) that others believe
