Selling concepts

1. Consumer Attitudes
Chapter 6
Consumer Attitudes

2. What Are Attitudes?
 In a consumer behavior context, they are
learned predispositions to behave in a
consistently favorable or unfavorable way
with respect to a given object (e.g., people,
places, products, services or events)
 Attitudes are not observable; thus attitude
research is important for marketers

3. Attitudes are Learned
 We are not born with attitudes
 Attitudes relative to purchase behavior are
formed as a result of
1. direct experience with the product
2. word-of-mouth
3. exposure to mass media advertising, the
internet, and direct marketing
 Attitudes are not synonymous with behavior
 Attitudes may result from behavior

4. Attitudes Have Consistency
 Attitudes are not permanent and can and do
change
 Once attitudes develop, they are not always
easy to change
 Often the goal of marketing is to change
attitudes about a product or company
 Circumstances sometimes preclude
consistency between attitudes and behavior

5. Attitudes Occur Within a Situation
 How attitudes affect behavior depends on the
situation in which the behavior occurs
 Thus a specific situation may cause
consumers to behave in ways that are
inconsistent with their attitudes
 From a marketer’s perspective, it is important
to consider the situation in which the behavior
takes place, or one might misinterpret the
relationship between attitude and behavior

6. Sources of Attitudes
 Three Major Influences on Attitude
Formation
1. Personal experience
2. Influence of family and friends
3. Exposure to direct marketing and mass-
media

7. 1. Personal Experience
 The primary basis on which attitudes towards
goods and services are formed
 Free products, cents-off promotions, etc.
 Marketer’s goal is to get consumers to try a
product and, hopefully, develop a positive
attitude towards it

8. 2. Influence of Family & Friends
 Family and friends are a major influence on
our values, beliefs and attitudes
 We carry over into adulthood many of the
attitudes we developed as children
 Our peer and social groups also influence our
attitudes

9. 3. Direct Marketing & Mass Media
 Direct marketers are able to use new
technologies to target smaller and smaller
market segments
 As a result, many solicitations are highly
personalized and have the capacity to create
favorable attitudes towards their products
 Television, radio, newspapers and magazines
provide marketers with unlimited
opportunities to create positive attitudes
towards their products

10. The Functions of Attitudes
 Attitudes can be classified into four
functions:
1. Utilitarian Function
2. Ego-defensive Function
3. Value-expressive Function
4. Knowledge Function

11. 1. Utilitarian Function
 We have a favorable attitude towards a
product because it has been useful in the
past
 Marketers may stress the utilitarian feature or
may suggest uses of the product that may not
be obvious

12. 2. Ego-defensive Function
 Products that we purchase to protect our self-
images, to replace our sense of insecurity
with personal confidence

13. 3. Value-expressive Function
 We often express our personal values
through the brands we purchase and own
 Marketers often attempt to identify their
brands with these values

14. 4. Knowledge Function
 Consumers generally have a strong need to
know and understand the people and things
they come in contact with
 Many product and brand positioning
strategies are based on an attempt to satisfy
this “need to know”

15. Relation Between Attitude and Behavior
 It is fair to say that attitudes at least
sometimes guide behavior
 Thus it is important for marketers to
understand the role of attitudes in purchase
situations

16. Structural Models of Attitudes
 In order to understand the link between attitude and
behavior, psychologists have developed models to
help understand attitude
 The focus has been on specifying the composition of
an attitude to better explain or predict behavior.
 They have identified the following attitude models:
 The traditional/tricomponent model
 The multi-attribute model
 The theory of reasoned action (TORA)

17. Traditional/Tri-Component Model
 According to this model, attitude consists of
three components:
1. Cognitive component
2. Affective component
3. Behavioral/conative component

18. 1. Cognitive Component
 The knowledge and perceptions we have
about the object
 Based on personal experience with the object
and information from various sources (e.g.,
opinions of others, ads, articles, etc.)
 This knowledge and perceptions commonly
take the form of beliefs

19. 2. Affective Component
 A consumer’s emotions or feelings about a
particular product or brand
 Generally a reaction to the cognitive aspect
of the attitude
 Our emotional state may amplify positive or
negative experiences, which then have an
effect on our attitude

20. 3. Behavioral/Conative Component
 Is concerned with the likelihood or tendency
that a consumer will undertake a specific
action or behave in a particular way regarding
the attitude object
 Frequently treated as a consumer’s intention
to buy

21. Implications for Marketing Strategy
 When marketers use the traditional model to
create or change attitudes, they use the
various components as follows:
1. At the cognitive level with information
2. At the affective level with emotionally toned
messages
3. At the behavioral level with incentives (samples,
coupons, rebates)

22. The Multi-Attribute Model of Attitudes
 There are many variations on this model
 They include:
1. The attitude toward the object model
2. The attitude toward the behavior model
3. The theory of reasoned action model

23. 1. Attitude toward the object model
 Model is especially suitable for measuring
attitudes toward a product or service category
or specific brands
 Holds that a consumer’s attitude towards a
product or brands of a product is a function of
the presence (or absence), and an evaluation
of, certain product-specific beliefs or
attributes

24.  Consumers generally have favorable
attitudes toward brands they believe have an
adequate level of attributes they evaluate as
positive
 Consumers have negative attitudes toward
brands they feel do not have an adequate
level of desired attributes or have too many
negative or undesired attributes

25. 2. Attitude toward behavior model
 A person’s attitude toward behaving or acting
with respect to an object, rather than toward
the object itself
 Not uncommon for consumers to have a
positive attitude toward an object but a
negative attitude toward purchasing it

26. 3. The Theory of Reasoned Action (TORA)
 According to this model, behavior is determined by a
person’s intention to behave
 To understand intention, we also need to measure
the subjective norms that influence an individual’s
intention to act
 A subjective norm can be measured directly by
assessing a consumer’s feelings as to what relevant
others (family, friends, co-workers) would think of
the action contemplated

27. Attitude Change
 Attitude change is an issue for every
marketer
 New entrants into the market need to change
the attitude of consumers that support
purchases from market leaders
 Market leaders need to strengthen the
positive attitudes of their customers to retain
their market share

28. Attitude change strategies
 Competitors can try to change the attitudes
of the market leaders’ customers in several
ways:
1. Comparative advertising
2. Emphasizing brand attributes
3. Adding new attributes
4. Providing knowledge of alternatives
5. Changing the relative value of attributes

29. 1. Comparative Advertising
 Identifying a major competitor and explaining
why your product is superior in one or more
ways
 http://nonemore.keenspace.com/souprivalry.s
sf

30. 2. Emphasizing Brand Attributes
 Identifies and highlights features of the
product that consumers may not be familiar
with or that may be new or innovative

31. 3. Adding attributes
 Can involve
 Stressing an attribute that has been ignored; or
 Adding an attribute that represents an
improvement or technological innovation

32. 4. Providing knowledge of alternatives or
consequences
 Providing consumers with evidence, facts or
figures enable them to make informed
choices between competing brands

33. 5. Changing the relative value of attributes
 Often a market for a particular type of product
is divided so that different market segments
are offered different brands, each with
different features or benefits
 When this occurs, marketers have an
opportunity to persuade consumers to “cross
over” to their brand