Lecture 3

Question 1

What are attitudes?

Answer 1

• An attitude is an overall evaluation that expresses how much we like or dislike an object, issue, person, or action
• It is learned and persist over time, and based on a set of associations linked to it

Question 2

Attitude Components

Answer 2

Affective - Emotions of feelings about specific attributes or overall object

Cognitive - Beliefs about specific attributes or overall object

Behavioural - Behavioural intentions with respect to specific attributes or overall object

Question 3

The characteristics of attitudes

Answer 3

• Favorability – how much we like/dislike the object
• Accessibly - How easily and readily an attitude can be retrieved from memory
• Strength – how strongly we hold an attitude
• Persistence – how long our attitude lasts
• Resistance – how difficult it is to change an attitude

Question 4

Where do beliefs come from?

Answer 4

• Actual experiences or imagining
• Reasoning by analogy or category
• Values-driven attitudes
• Social identity-based attitude generation

Question 5

Strategies marketers use to change consumer attitudes?

Answer 5

• Change the strength of the beliefs
• Add a new belief
• Encourage imagined experience
• Target normative beliefs

Question 6

Attitudes and Behavior

Answer 6

• Attitudes do not always predict behavior
• Attitudes predict behavior when the consumer is knowledgeable, when consumers analyze their reasons, when consumers are emotionally connected to the brand

Question 7

Low-Effort Situations

Answer 7

Unwilling or unable to exert a lot of effort to processing the central idea behind a marketing communication

Question 8

Low effort consumers

Answer 8

o Passive recipients of the message

o Usually do not form beliefs or accessible, persistent or resistant attitudes

o May not remember formed attitudes and form attitudes anew each time

Question 9

Peripheral route to persuasion

Answer 9

• Attitudes are based on easily processed aspects of the message (peripheral cues)

Question 10

Cognitive Bases of Attitudes when consumer effort is low

Answer 10

• Heuristics – simple rules of thumb e.g. a well known brand must be good
• Frequency heuristic – belief based on the number of supporting arguments or amount of repetition
• Truth effect – when consumers believe a statement simply because it has been repeated a number of times

Question 11

How cognitive attitudes are influenced

Answer 11

• The communication source and credibility
• The message itself
• Involving messages through self referencing

Question 12

Classical conditioning

Answer 12

• Producing a response to a stimulus by repeatedly pairing it with another stimulus that automatically produces this response
• E.g. Pavlovs dogs. Food = unconditioned stimulus, salivation response to the food = unconditioned response, bell = conditioned stimulus, salivation response to the bell = conditioned response
• A stimulus is unconditioned when it automatically elicits an involuntary response

Question 13

How affective attitudes are influenced

Answer 13

• Communication source – physical attractiveness, likeability, celebrity
• Message – pleasant pictures, music, humour