Lecture Unit 8: Consumer Attitudes and Influencing Attitudes Flashcards
What is attitude?
- It is a learned predisposition to respond in a consistently favorable or unfavorable manner with respect to a given object
- Thus, an attitude is the way one thinks, feels and acts toward some aspect of his or her environment, such as a retail store, television program or product
What is consumer attitude?
=is a predisposition consumers have toward a product or service
What are some cosumer attitude examples?
Examples:
- consumers might be skeptical about the value of a new type of technology
- they might hold a negative opinion about a particular brand due to past experiences
What are the two types of attitutdes?
- Explicit attitudes are conscious beliefs that can guide decisions and behavior
- Implicit attitudes are unconscious beliefs that can still influence decisions and behavior
What are the 3 dimensions of attitudes?
- Attitude strength: Strong attitudes are those that are firmly held and that highly influence behavior
- Attitude accessibility: refers to the ease with which it comes to mind
- Attitude ambivalence: refers to the ratio of positive and negative evaluations that make up that attitude.
Define the 3 attitude components and their manifestation
Affective:
- Emotion or feelings about specic attributes or overall object (>Manifestations)
Cognitive:
- Beliefs I about specific attributes or overall object (>Manifestations)
Behavioral:
- Behavioral intentions with respect to specific attributes or overall object (>Manifestations)
What are multiattribute attitude models?
= Models that examine the composition of consumer attitudes in terms of selected product attributes or beliefs:
- attitude-toward object model
- attitutde-toward behavior model
- theory of reasoned action model
What is attitude-toward object model?
- attitude is a function of the presence of certain beliefs or attributes
- useful to measure attitudes toward product and service categories or specific brands
What is attitude-toward behavior model?
- the attitude toward behaving or acting with respect to an object (rather than the attitude toward the object itself)
- corresponds closely to actual behavior
What is the theory of reasoned-action model?
- includes cognitive, affective and conative components
- includes subjective norms in addition to attitude
What is affective component?
- Feelings or emotional reactions to an object
- increasingly used by marketers to provide a richer understanding of attitudes than that based solely on the cognitive or “thinking” component
Why are marketers increasingly turning their attention to the affective component of attitudes?
To provide a richer understanding of attitudes than that based solely on the cognitive or “thinking” component.
What are the two types of benefits and attitudesof affective component
- Utilitarian/functional benefits and attitudes
- hedonic/emotional benefits and attitudes.
Affective component: What is the impact of aestheically pleasing product design`?
- Aesthetically pleasing or interesting product designs can evoke powerful emotional responses
- that are such a critical aspect of the affective component of attitudes
What are the three components of an overall attitude?
- Affective Component (feelings),
- Cognitive Component (beliefs),
- Behavioral Component (response tendencies).
What are factors that may account for inconsistencies? (Attitude components)
- Lack of need
- Lack of ability
- Relative attitudes
- Attitude ambivalence
- Measurement
- Situational factors
- Weak beliefs and affect
- Interpersonal influence
What are the different attitutde change strategies?
- Change the Cognitive Component
- Change the Affective Component
- Change the Behavioral Component
How to change the Affective component? (Attitude change strategies)
- Classical Conditioning
- Affect toward the ad or website
- Mere Exposure
How to change the Cognitive component? (Attitude change strategies)
- Change Beliefs
- Shift Importance
- Add Beliefs
- Change Ideal
How to change the behavior component? (Attitude change strategies)
- Behavior may precede the development of cognition and affect
- It may also occur in contrast to cognitive and affective components
What is the elaboration likelihood model (ELM) about?
= is a theory about how attitudes are formed and changed under varying conditions of involvement
What are the core tentants of the elaboration likelihood model (ELM)?
= Compared to attitudes formed under the peripheral route,
attitudes formed under the central route tend to be
- stronger
- more resistant to counter-persuasion attempts
- more accessible from memory, and
- more predictive of behaviors
What are the two routes to persuasion in the Elaboration Likelihood Model?
- Central route to persuasion and
- Peripheral route to persuasion
What characterizes the central route to persuasion? (Involvement, attention, thoughts, persuasion)
- High involvement with product, message, or decision
- Strong attention focused on central, product-related features and factual information
- Conscious thoughts about product attributes and use outcomes; considerable elaborative activities
- Persuasion generally alters product beliefs, which influence brand attitude, which influences purchase intentions
What characterizes the peripheral route to persuasion? (Involvement, attention, information processing, persuasion)
- Low involvement with product, message, or decision
- Limited attention focused on peripheral, nonproduct features and feelings
- Low or nonconscious information processing; few or no elaborative activities
- Persuasion operates through classical conditioning; affect change, attitude toward the ad, and nonconscious belief changes lead to behavioral and attitude change
What are peripheral cues and central cues?
Peripheral Cues (PCs): influence persuasion under LOW involvement but not high involvement
Central Cues (CCs): influence persuasion under HIGH involvement but not low involvement
BUT: there are caveats and exceptions relating to cue relevance and competitive situation
What is the cue relevance in the example of an attrative model for ads?
- An attractive model (and her hair) may be decision irrelevant (PC) in an ad for a car,
- but decision relevant (CC) in an ad for shampoo
- In this case, the attractive model would influence persuasion under high involvement for shampoos but not for cars
When can PCs influence persuasion under high involvement in competitive situations?
= PCs can influence persuasion under high involvement in competitive situations when:
- Central cues neutralize due to homogeneity across competing brands (PC then becomes tie breaker)
- Attribute tradeoffs across central cues engenders decision difficulty which PCs help to alleviate
What are the key points of consumer resistance to persuasion?
- Consumers are not passive to persuasion attempts
- Consumers are often skeptical (an individual characteristic) and resist persuasion
- Consumers frequently infer an advertiser’s intent and respond in light of that presumed selling intent
What are the “resisting brand attacks” that consumers use when they feel an advertisers intent? (Atttitude change)
- Discrediting
- Discounting
- Containment
What are the 3 types of communication characteristics?
- Source characteristics (Who delivers message)
- Appeal characteristics (How message is communicated)
- Message structure characteristics (How message is presented)
What is important for source characteristics?? (3)
- Source credibility: persuasion is easier when the target market views the message source as highly credible
- Celebrity sources: can be effective in enhancing attention, attitude toward the ad, trustworthiness, expertise
- Sponsorship: often work in much the same manner as using a celebrity endorser
When is the effectiveness of celebrity source improved?
effectivness is enhanced when marketers match:
- Target audienece actual or ideaal self-cooncept
- image of the product
- Image of the endorser
What are the appeal characteristics?
- Humorous appeals
- Emotional appeals
- Comparative ads
- Fear appeals
- Value-expressive vs. utilitarian appeals
appeal characteristics:
What is value expressive vs. utilitarian appeals? and when is it most effective?
Value-expressive appeals
- attempt to build a personality for the product or
- create an image of the product user
- Most effective for products designed to enhance self-image or provide other intangible benefits
appeal characteristics:
What is value expressive vs. utilitarian appeals? And when is it most effective?
Utilitarian appeals
- involve informing the consumer of one or more functional benefits that are important to the target market
- Most effective for functional products
What is important to consider regarding “message structure charactteristics?
- One-Sided vs. Two-Sided Messages
- Positive vs. Negative Framing
- Nonverbal Component
Message structure characteristics: Positive vs. Negative framing:
What is attribute framing?
Attribute Framing: Only a single attribute is the focus of the frame
For example, describing beef as either
- 80% fat free (positive frame) or
- 20% fat (negative frame)
Message structure characteristics: Positive vs. Negative framing:
What is Goal framing?
Goal Framing: Message stresses either positive aspect of performing an act or negative aspects of not performing the act.
For example, having a yearly mammogram **
- Benefits of having mammogram emphasized (positive** frame)
- Risks of not having mammogram
emphasized (negative)
Message structure characteristics: Positive vs. Negative framing:
What are non-verbal components?
- Nonverbal component can influence attitudes through affect, cognition, or both
- Emotional ads often rely primarily or exclusively on nonverbal content to drive emotional responses
- These can include: pictures, music, surrealism
