literature review
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Plenary 5 Learning Outcomes
LO1: Understand what attitudes are and how they impact strategy and consumer behaviour.
LO2: Understand the nature of attitudes and factors that influence them
LO3: Understand the tri-component model of attitudes.
LO4: Understand the principle of attitude-component consistency and how marketers apply it.
LO5: Understand how attitudes are changed.
LO6: Understand the elaboration likelihood model and how it is applied in marketing.
Qualitative
Quantitative
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Readings
Argyriou, E., & Melewar, T. C. (2011). Consumer attitudes revisited: A Review of attitude theory in marketing research. International Journal of Management Reviews, 13(4), 431–451. https://doi.org/10.1111/j.1468-2370.2011.00299.x
Qualitative
Quantitative
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Attitudes: What is an attitude?
Expressions of inner feelings that reflect whether a person is favorably or unfavorably predisposed to some object
- Coca Cola is a great drink
- Game of Thrones is a boring series
In marketing, “object” can be a brand, a brand name, a service, a service provider, a retail store, a company, an advertisement, in essence, any marketing stimuli.
Qualitative
Quantitative
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Attitudes: What is an attitude?
Changing consumer attitudes or translating attitudes into actual purchase behaviour is one of the most difficult activities that a marketer will do.
An attitude is an enduring combination of motivational, emotional, perceptual, and cognitive processes regarding some aspect of our environment. It is a learned predisposition, where we learn to respond in a consistently favourable (i.e., positive) or unfavourable (i.e., negative) way to an attitude object.
In essence, an attitude is how we think and feel about, and act towards an aspect of our environment. It is our overall evaluation of an attitude object.
An attitude object is anything that we can have an attitude towards (e.g., physical object, issue, person, behaviour, experience, event, etc).
(Quester et al., 2014)
Qualitative
Quantitative
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The influence of attitudes
Qualitative
Quantitative
Consumer behaviour
Purchase
Consumption
Communication
Attitudes
Towards:
Products/brands
Situations
People/places
Marketing strategy
Influences:
Feelings
Beliefs
Intentions
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Nature of attitudes
Attitudes have valence, meaning they can range from positive to negative.
Attitudes have strength, which is called intensity, meaning an attitude can be very weak or very strong.
Attitudes can be held with varying degrees of confidence, which reinforces the link between an attitude and a behaviour.
Qualitative
Quantitative
| Positive | Negative | |
| Very weak | Positive but very weak attitude held with low confidence | Negative but very weak attitude held with low confidence |
| Positive but very weak attitude held with high confidence | Negative but very weak attitude held with high confidence | |
| Very strong | Positive and very strong attitude held with low confidence | Negative and very strong attitude held with low confidence |
| Positive and very strong attitude held with high confidence | Negative and very strong attitude held with high confidence |
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Early experiences
Family experiences
Knowledge of the attitude object
Vicarious learning and WOM
Marketing stimuli
What influences attitudes?
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Development of Attitudes
Qualitative
Quantitative
Attitudes are learned predispositions; therefore, their development is influenced by:
personality of the individual
family
peers
experience
education
culture
subculture, nationality
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Why, from a Marketer’s point of view, is it important to know about Attitudes?
If a consumer is favourably disposed towards your product or service (i.e. has a positive attitude) then you want to keep them so disposed
If they are unfavourably disposed or neutral, then you want to change their attitude.
Qualitative
Quantitative
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Attitude-change
strategies
Marketers can induce change in:
An individual consumer’s attitude towards a product or
Brand
Whole product categories
Groups of consumers
Society as a whole
Qualitative
Quantitative
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Tri-component attitude model
Qualitative
Quantitative
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Attitude-component consistency
The principle of cognitive consistency
All three attitude components tend towards consistency, and a change in one attitude component will usually produce related changes in the other two components.
Cognitive dissonance (Festinger, 1957) The disconcerting experience of
inconsistency between attitude
components.
Marketers seek to cause this.
Qualitative
Quantitative
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Attitude-change
strategies
Qualitative
Quantitative
Affective component
Feelings or emotional reactions to the attitude object.
Cognitive component
Beliefs and knowledge about the attitude object.
Behavioural component
Tendency to respond in a certain way towards the attitude object.
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Strategies for Attitude change
Change the cognitive component:
Change beliefs (also about competitor)
Change the relative importance of beliefs
Add new beliefs
Change the affective component
Classical conditioning
Mere exposure
Develop ‘likeable’ ads
Change the behavioural component
Induce trial (operant conditioning)
Qualitative
Quantitative
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Three Components of Attitudes
The ABCs of attitudes:
The Affective Component (feelings)
I feel happy when I drive a Nissan Leaf (fits my values)
The Behavioral Component (action toward object, intention)
I will buy a Nissan Leaf next time
The Cognitive Component (beliefs)
I think the Nissan Leaf is …quiet, affordable, safe
Qualitative
Quantitative
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Changing the behaviour component
Sometimes, behaviour can precede cognition or affect (e.g.,
product trials, taste tests, etc).
Or behaviour can occur despite opposing cognition and/or affect (e.g., a friend offering you a drink and you accept to avoid being rude)
Can result in, “Hey, this isn’t so bad!”
Attitudes formed from product trial tend to be strongly held.
How to induce behaviour before cognition or affect, or despite opposing cognition or affect? Operant conditioning!
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Changing the behaviour component
You are a business and receive this review: What do you do?
I am absolutely disgusted at the service provided by Tiffany at the restaurant on Saturday 31st October. Poor communication, late and cold food, there was even a hair in my food. Disgusting. -5 stars. I am never coming back.
Quantitative
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Changing the cognitive component
A common and effective approach.
According to the principle of cognitive consistency, if a belief about an issue/product/brand is changed, then affect and behaviour should also change.
Changed cognition (beliefs) can lead to purchase (behaviour), which then leads to increased liking (affect).
4 basic strategies to alter the cognitive structure of a
consumer’s attitude:
Changing beliefs about the attributes of a brand
Shifting the relative importance of beliefs
Adding new beliefs
Changing beliefs about the ideal brand
Quantitative
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Changing the cognitive component
4 basic strategies to alter the cognitive structure of a
consumer’s attitude:
Changing beliefs about the attributes of a brand
Shifting the relative importance of beliefs
Adding new beliefs
Changing beliefs about the ideal brand
Quantitative
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The Path to Attitude Change
Elaboration Likelihood Model (Petty & Cacioppo)
(1) Central Route - high involvement
Strong arguments work best.
(2) Peripheral Route - low involvement
Cues work best.
Ties in with Involvement, Perception, Learning & Memory
Quantitative
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Elaboration Likelihood Model—ELM
(Petty & Cacioppo, 1986)
Quantitative
Message is unimportant, uninteresting
Heuristic processing
Non-verbal cues become important
Arguments become less important
Message is important, interesting
Systematic processing
Arguments become important
Non-verbal cues become less important
Central Route to Persuasion
Peripheral Route to Persuasion
Marketing stimulus
Attention
Low involvement processing
High involvement processing
Cognitive response
Belief and attitude change
Behaviour change
Belief change
Behaviour change
Attitude change
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Using attributes for product development
(Quester et al., 2014)
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Measuring attitudes
Qualitative- (focus groups, in-depth interviews, observations)
Quantitative- Self-report attitude scales, eg.
- Likert scale - Semantic differential
- Rank order
Quantitative
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Attitudes for Marketers
Who is delivering the message can have a big impact on whether it will be accepted.
A credible source can be particularly persuasive
Quantitative
Expertise
Trustworthiness
Objectivity
Attractiveness
Source credibility
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The message
Quantitative
Words
Versus
Pictures
Argument
Message
as Metaphor
Vividness
Type of
Appeal
Repetition
Factors
Affecting
Persuasiveness
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The Message: Stressing the benefits
Stress a unique attribute or benefit of the product - USP
Showing convenience of use
Showing new product or improved features
Indirect comparison with other products
Demonstration of the product in use
Demonstration of tangible results
No principal character - i.E. More time is devoted to the product
People incidental to the message
Quantitative
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Words or Pictures?
Visual
affects aesthetic evaluations
stress on creativity
factual information conveyed poorly
Verbal
Takes more time for consumer to process
Better suited to high involvement medium - eg print
harder to remember therefore more repetition needed
Quantitative
Verbal elements are more effective when reinforced by an accompanying picture
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Message appeals
Emotional
Humorous
Fear
Sex
Comparative
Slice-of-Life
Quantitative
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Emotional Appeals
Quantitative
Emotional versus rational appeals
Depends on the product and the type of relationship the consumers have with it. - ads for cars focus on emotion
Recall for ad contents tends to be better for thinking ads than for feeling ads
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Images and text in this ad are designed to have the maximum emotional effect for one purpose: to persuade the reader to make an act of charity
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Humorous Appeals
Quantitative
Effective humour surprises the audience, and at the same time, speaks some sort of truth.
The goal in using humour in advertising is to make the audience laugh, and, more importantly, have them walk away thinking "this company understands me"
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Humorous Appeals
Quantitative
Humor is more appropriate for low-involvement products and feeling-oriented products than for high-involvement products.
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Pitfalls of Humorous Appeals
Quantitative
Funny material can dominate the message and thus the product recognition is lost
Culturally relative
Reduces Comprehension
A punch line that doesn't pay off – can backfire
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Fear Factor
Quantitative
Highlight the risk or negative consequences of not using the brand or of engaging in unsafe behaviour
Fear of social physical harm or social disapproval
Fear stimulates message involvement
Common factor for public-policy issues e.g. stop smoking
Pitfall - distract customer from focal product (i.e. dwell on the fearful event rather than the proposed solution)
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Fear Appeals
Quantitative
Ads with fear appeals are also effective in capturing people’s attention. However, self-defense mechanisms (distraction and counter arguing) may decrease its evaluative effects
Fear appeals are usually most effective when only a moderate amount of fear is induced increasing levels of fear do no result in increased change
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The strategic implications of attitudes for marketers
Quantitative
Market segmentation
Benefit segmentation: Shows which attribute gives a competitive advantage and which gives a disadvantage
New product development and improvement
Brand positioning and re-positioning
Advertising/ communications – guides what to focus on
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As marketers, we need to know..
Quantitative
How to Change Consumers Attitudes
Why Consumers Form Attitudes?
How Consumers Form Attitudes?
How to Measure Consumers Attitudes
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