Consumer Behaviour and Psychology related slides

1. ATTRIBUTION THEORY
&
COGNITIVE DISSONANCE
Attribution Theory- “It’s not
whether you win or lose, it’s
how you place the blame”

2. Attribution Theory
History and Orientation
• Heider (1958) was the first to propose a
psychological theory of attribution
• Heider discussed what he called “naïve” or
“commonsense” psychology. In his view, people
were like amateur scientists, trying to understand
other people’s behavior by piecing together
information until they arrived at a reasonable
explanation or cause.
(Attribution theory assumes that people draw upon
their past experiences when facing a new situation-
ex- Product experience)

3. Core Assumptions and Statements
• Attribution theory assumes that people try to
determine why people do what they do.
• A person seeking to understand why another
person did something may attribute one or
more causes to that behavior.
• According to Heider, a person can make two
attributions: 1) Internal attribution
2) External attribution

4. Internal Vs External Attributions
• He fell down because he is clumsy (internal
attribution). I fell down because the furniture was
haphazardly arranged (external attribution).
• She is always late to the class. She is very
tardy.(Here we use internal, i.e., personality/
dispositional factors to explain others' behavior)
• I was late to the class because of the chaotic
traffic.(explain our behavior in terms of external
or situational factors)

5. Jones and Davis’ Theory
• Jones and Davis’ theory helps us understand
the process of making an internal attribution.
• Dispositional (i.e. internal) attributions
provide us with information from which we
can make predictions about a person’s future
behavior
They say that we tend to do this when we see a
correspondence between motive and behavior.
For example: when we see a correspondence between
someone behaving in a friendly way and being a friendly
person.

6. People draw on following 5 Sources of
information to infer:
1. Choice
2. Accidental vs. Intentional Behavior
3. Social Desirability
4. Hedonistic Relevance
5. Personalism

7. Kelley's Covariation Model
• He developed a logical model for judging
whether a particular action should be
attributed to some characteristic (internal) of
the person or the environment (external).
• Kelley believed that there were three types of
causal information which influenced our
judgments: 1. Consensus
2. Distinctiveness
3. Consistency

8. Scope and Application
• Attribution theory has been used to explain
the difference in motivation between high
and low achievers.
• Understanding Market and Strategy
formulation.
• Purchasing Context and shaping Product
Perception ( Price is one factor in attributing value, as
some consumers may attribute poor quality to a product
with an exceptionally low price)
• Fall back on past experience and look for
either reasons(Ex: Sports)

9. Cognitive Dissonance
• Cognitive dissonance refers to a situation
involving conflicting attitudes, beliefs or
behaviors.
• This produces a feeling of discomfort leading to
an alteration in one of the attitudes, beliefs or
behaviors to reduce the discomfort and restore
balance etc.
• For example, when people smoke (behavior) and
they know that smoking causes cancer
(cognition).

11. How Attitude change take place?
• change one or more of the attitudes
• acquire new information
• reduce the importance of the cognitions (i.e.
beliefs, attitudes)
Various factors that have been identified which may
be important in attitude change. This research can
be divided into three main areas:
• Forced compliance behavior
• Decision-making,
• Effort.

12. THANK YOU