Consumer Behaviour

The consumer as director: attitude and attitude change

Week 6

Good and bad are but names readily transferable to this or that” Ralph Waldo Emerson 1841

http://www.youtube.com/embed/0ZOm2YhOI4c

Lectures objectives

• Understand the nature and power of attitudes. • Attitudes are more complex than they first appear.• We form attitudes in several ways.• Consumers are motivated to maintain consistency

between all the components of their attitudes, so they may alter one or more parts to realise this goal.

• Understand ways of measuring attitudes – focus on Theory of Reasoned Action

• Understand ways of changing attitudes

What are attitudes?• An enduring combination of motivational, emotional, perceptual and

cognitive processes with respect to some aspect of the environment• A lasting, general evaluation of people (including oneself), objects,

advertisements, or issues• Attitudes exist because they serve some function for the person (i.e. they

are determined by a person’s motives)• Attitudes are salient

– Important, meaningful to the individual

• Learned predisposition to behave in a consistently (un)favourable way with respect to a given object– Direction of liking, favourability (+ve or –ve)– Intensity or strength , accessibility– Confidence or degree to which consumer believes their attitude is ‘right’

What are attitudes?• Attitudes have consistency

– Attitudes are relatively consistent with the behaviour they reflect – e.g. if I believe smoking is unhealthy I may try to stop smoking– Consumers often do not behave consistently with their attitudes for several reasons:

Ability Competing demands for resources Social influence

• Attitudes occur within a situation– Specific situations can cause consumers to behave in ways seemingly inconsistent with their attitudes – When measuring attitudes, must consider the situation in which the behaviour takes place or the

relationship between attitudes and behaviour could be misinterpreted– E.g. what is my attitude towards station wagons now when I have no kids vs. when I do have kids?– E.g. attitude towards McDonalds is very negative, but when travelling on the road it is convenient.

• Attitudes are transferable– Attitude transfer applies where an attitude toward one situation can be applied to another– One attitude can affect several purchase situations– E.g. Brand extensions

Positive attitudes toward brands (i.e. the object) can help the success of brand extensions

What is an attitude object?• Anything toward which one has an attitude is called an object (Ao).

– Object refers to such things as: • product (e.g. iPod)• product category (e.g. fashion clothing)• brand (e.g. Coca-Cola)• service (e.g. Qantas), • possession (e.g. cars)• product use (e.g. smoking)• Advertisement• Price• retailer (e.g. David Jones) • person (e.g. John Howard) • an issue (e.g. drink driving)

Structural Models of Attitudes

• Tricomponent Attitude Model

• Multi-Attribute Attitude Model

• Attitude towards the Ad

• Theory of Reasoned Action

Structure of attitudes

• Tricomponent Model of Attitudes– Cognition

• the beliefs a consumer holds about an attitude object

– Affect• the way a consumer feels about an attitude object

– Conative• the way people behave with regard to the attitude

Attitude components and manifestations

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Cognitive component• The consumer’s beliefs and knowledge about the

attributes of a particular brand, product or outlet

– Many beliefs relate to the evaluation of attributes

– The cognitive component represents the summation of evaluations

– Multi-attribute model

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Affective component

• Represents the consumer’s ‘feelings’ or emotional reaction to a product

– Based on experience or cognitive information

– Response is person-situation specific

– Cultural influence

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Thai Life Insurancehttp://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UvYb4BLIAQw&feature=relatedhttp://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LR5mZqeDNtg&feature=related

Behavioural component

• Represents the consumer’s tendency (intention) to respond in a particular way towards the object or event

– Behaviour

– Intention

– Situational influence

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Anti-smokinghttp://www.youtube.com/embed/4Vn3mLIlqp4

Component consistency • The three components of an attitude (cognitive, affective and behavioural) have

a tendency to be consistent.

• A change in one component will have a flow-on effect on the other components.

• Very important in marketing strategy

• Cognitive Consistency– We strive to make sense out of what we think, feel and do

• Cognitive Dissonance– Uncomfortable feeling caused by holding two contradictory cognitions

• i.e. Attitudes and behaviour• E.g. opposing the slaughter of animals and eating meat

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Component consistency

Measurement of attitude components

• As components of attitude are an integral part of a marketing strategy, it is important to be able to measure each component.

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Cognitive: Belief system for two methods of Broadband Internet

Access

Cognitive: A Consumer’s Belief System for Two Brands of Pocket

Digital Organisers

PRODUCT

BRAND

ATTRIBUTES

BELIEFS

EVALUATIONS

POCKET DIGITAL ORGANIZERS

PalmPilot

Ease of use Handwriting feature PC backup Other features

Known to be simple to use

A little effort to learn a few rules

Simple one button Doesn’t have built-in drawing feature

(++++) (+++) (++) (-)

BRAND

ATTRIBUTES

BELIEFS

EVALUATIONS

Casio Cassiopeia

Ease of use Handwriting feature PC backup Other features

A longer learning curve

Easy, but a little learning

Some learning Has drawing and voice-record features

(+) (++) (++) (+++)

Affective: Evaluative scale used to gauge travellers’ attitudes

towards Virgin airlines

Affective: Measuring consumer ‘feelings’ and emotions about Virgin airlines

flight

Affective: Attitudes towards the Website

Note the global assessments

Conative: Two Examples of Intention-to-Buy Scales

Multi-attribute Model

• Portray consumers’ attitudes with regard to an object (e.g. a product, service, cause or issue) as a function of consumers’ perception and assessment of the key attributes or beliefs held with regard to the particular attitude object

• What is a multi-attribute attitude model?– It is a mathematical representation of the nonconscious process

consumers go through in evaluating the overall cognitive component of an attitude toward a particular object.

– Its elements include:1. Beliefs about an object’s attributes.2. Ideal performance levels for each attribute.3. Relative importance attached to each attribute.

Multi-attribute Model

• The cognitive component of the tripartite model is generally assessed by using a version of the multi-attribute or Fishbein model:

• Ao=[SUM]BiEi

where: • Ao = the overall attitude toward object o

• Bi = the strength of the belief that object o has some particular attribute i

• Ei = the evaluation of the goodness or badness of attribute i

Note that the evaluative component serves as something of a weight.

Taste

Stain Overall Attitude

Beverage 4 7

Coffee 6 -4

Evaluation

24 -28 -4

Attitude toward the Ad• Measures the impact of advertising on consumer attitudes toward

particular products or brands

• Consumers form various feelings (affects) and judgment (cognitions) about the object as the result of exposure to an ad

• Is a consumer’s general liking or disliking for a particular advertising stimulus during a particular advertising exposure.

• The consumer’s attitude toward the ad and beliefs about the brand influence his or her attitude toward the brand

• Affect Transfer Hypothesis– Aad Ab PI

Attitude toward the Ad

Diesel: Global Warming Ready

http://www.print.duncans.tv/category/environment-campaigns/

CreditsDiesel In-House team: Wilbert Das, Antonella Viero, Lucinda Spera, Giulia Castellini

Photographer: Terry RichardsonCreative by Diesel’s global agency: Marcel, France,

Executive Creative Director/copywriter/account supervisor: Frederic TeminCreative director/art director: Nicholas Chauvin

Art director/typographer: Romin Favre.

The campaign won a Silver Lion for Print at Cannes International Advertising Festival 2007.

Attitude towards the Ads• I think the ads are:

– Glamorous– Provocative– Offensive– Stylish– Ridiculous– Insensitive

• The ads make me feel:– Contented– Confused– Distressed– Superior

• I think the brand Diesel is:– High Quality– Rebellious– Fashionable– Modern– Mindless– Trustworthy– Frivolous

• The next time I purchase clothing, I will buy Diesel.

Attitude change strategies• Changing or establishing an attitude requires manipulation of one or more of the components of the attitude (i.e. cognitive, affective or behavioural)

•Changing the affective component– Involves changing the consumer’s ‘feel’ about a product, without necessarily directly

influencing their beliefs or behaviour• Classical conditioning• Affect towards the advertisement• Mere exposure

• Changing the behavioural component– Alter the purchase behaviour or consumption behaviour directly, which may in turn

lead to a change in belief or affect– Change in beliefs or improved knowledge base will have subsequent influence on

affect and behaviour• Operant conditioning

– sampling (trialing)19

Changing the cognitive component• Changing beliefs

– Shift beliefs about the performance of the brand on one or more attributes– Shift / upgrade perceptions about quality, durability, link with schematic interpretation

• Eg: Hyundai

• Shifting importance– Shift relative importance away from attributes evaluated as poor to attributes that are positively valued

• Eg: Fosters beer: shift from price and taste to social status

• Adding beliefs– Add new beliefs to the consumer’s belief structure

• McDonald’s - health• Chanel perfume: reposition to younger audience change belief structure of new TA that Chanel perfume

is stylish, cool• LG & Hyundai – ‘future driven’ moving consumers to perceive these products as part of future not the

past

• Changing the ideal• Alter overall assessment of the brand without altering evaluation of brand attributes• ‘best selling brand’; ‘other imitate• Social marketing issues: Health, skin cancer, safe driving

An ad aimed at changing

a belief

11-35

Adding a new belief

Elaboration Likelihood Model2 routes to persuasion

• Highly involved consumers tend to process rational content message• Central route to persuasion• Strongly held attitudes & firm opinions re: object• High involvement products• High attitude accessibility• Processing based on message arguments – evaluation of object strengthened via

rational, cognitive, logical information

• Low involved consumers tend to process message cues as a means to acquire knowledge of brand/product

• Peripheral route to persuasion• Low involvement products• Fast moving consumables• Jingles, sounds, product image, demonstration –pictorial, person• Processing based on attention to stimulus cues to increase ‘knowing’ about the

product

Communication characteristics influencing attitude change

• Message will have different effects if communicated by different source• Two important source characteristics:

– Credibility :• source’s perceived expertise, objectivity, or trustworthiness

– Attractiveness:• source’s perceived social value; celebrities, models, animals

• Celebrity sources1. Attract attention2. Maybe viewed as more credible3. Consumers may identify with or desire to emulate the celebrity4. Consumer may associate know characteristics of the celebrity with attributes of the

product which coincide with their own needs or desires.• ‘What is Beautiful Is Good’:

– A physically attractive source tends to facilitate attitude change.• Social adaptation perspective:

– Assumes that the perceiver will weight information seen to be instrumental in forming an attitude more heavily. Irrelevant information is filtered out to minimise cognitive effort.

• Emotional Attachment

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Emotional Appeals

– Message is constructed to elicit a response/feeling rather than provide information

– Use affect to induce empathy • Cerebral Palsy http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VBWsYoejU_Q

– may increase attraction to a product– may backfire if consumers believe that people’s feelings are being exploited.

• Seatbelt

• United Colors of Benetton– promoting social awareness to real-life issues

Other appeals used to change attitudes

• Appeal Characteristics– Fear

• unpleasant consequences if attitude and/or behaviour is not altered• Seatbelts http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4IlLX5h-oWQ&feature=related

– Humour • Learn English http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GT86iWiH2mI

– Comparative advertisement• comparing attributes of focus brand to those of competitor• Ability http://www.youtube.com/embed/cJjRXzFqDRs• using an implied comparison

– ‘the burgers are better at Hungry Jack’s’• This can be quite effective, although it may also give visibility and awareness to

consumers of the competing brand

What’s important?• Attitudes are

– made up of what we think, feel and do– Learnt, depend on the situation, transferable, consistent

• Strategies marketers can use to change the way consumers think, feel and do – identify salient attributes and key benefits to develop new products– measure attitudes and predict behavioral intentions– create promotional campaigns to influence consumer beliefs,

attitudes, and behaviors.– employ benefit segmentation