Chapter 7,8,9 review
Attitudes, Attitude Change, and
Decision Making
By Michael R. Solomon
Consumer Behavior
Buying, Having, and Being
Sixth Edition
7-1
The Power of Attitudes
• Attitude:
– A lasting, general evaluation of people (including
oneself), objects, advertisements, or issues
– Anything toward which one has an attitude is
called an object (Ao).
– Attitudes are lasting because they tend to endure
over time.
7-2
The Functions of Attitudes
• Functional Theory of Attitudes:
– Attitudes exist because they serve some function
for the person (i.e., they are determined by a
person’s motives)
• Katz’s Attitude Functions
–
–
–
–
Utilitarian function (Drink coke for the taste of it)
Value-expressive function (Nike: Just Do It)
Ego-defensive function (Right Guard Deodorant)
Knowledge function (Advil and Vioxx)
7-3
Addressing Smoking Attitudes
• This Norwegian ad addresses young people’s smoking
attitudes by arousing strong negative feelings. The ad reads
(left panel) “Smokers are more sociable than others.” (Right
panel): “While it lasts.”
7-4
The ABC Model of Attitudes
• Affect:
– The way a consumer feels about an attitude object
• Behavior:
– Involves the person’s intentions to do something
with regard to an attitude object
• Cognition:
– The beliefs a consumer has about an attitude object
• Hierarchy of Effects:
– A fixed sequence of steps that occur en route to an
attitude
7-5
Three Hierarchies of Effects
Figure 7.1
7-6
Attitude Hierarchies
• The Standard Learning Hierarchy:
– Consumer approaches a product decision as a
problem-solving process
• The Low-Involvement Hierarchy:
– Consumer does not have strong initial preference
– Consumer acts on limited knowledge
– Consumer forms an evaluation only after product trial
• The Experiential Hierarchy:
– Consumers act on the basis of their emotional
reactions
7-7
Smith and Wollensky
• This ad for New York’s
famous Smith &
Wollensky restaurant
emphasizes that
marketers and others
associated with a
product or service are
often more involved
with it than are their
consumers.
7-8
Product Attitudes Don’t
Tell the Whole Story
• Attitude Toward the Advertisement (Aad):
– A predisposition to respond in a favorable or unfavorable
manner to a particular advertising stimulus during a
particular exposure occasion
• Ads Have Feelings Too:
– Three emotional dimensions:
• Pleasure, arousal, and intimidation
– Specific types of feelings that can be generated by an ad
• Upbeat feelings: Amused, delighted, playful
• Warm feelings: Affectionate, contemplative, hopeful
• Negative feelings: Critical, defiant, offended
7-9
Forming Attitudes
• Not All Attitudes are Created Equal:
– Levels of Commitment to an Attitude: The degree of
commitment is related to the level of involvement
with an attitude object
• Compliance (Pepsi at the exchange)
• Identification (Clothing, jewelry, shoes, music)
• Internalization (Apple Mac User’s, Newton’s)
– The Consistency Principle:
• Principle of Cognitive Consistency: Consumers value
harmony among their thoughts, feelings or behaviors
to be consistent with other experiences
7 - 10
Levels of Attitudinal Commitment
• By describing Cadillac as “my company,” the woman
in this ad exhibits a high level of attitudinal
commitment to her employer.
7 - 11
Attitudinal Commitment
• This ad for a magazine illustrates that consumers
often distort information so that it fits with what they
already believe or think they know.
7 - 12
Balance Theory
• Triad:
– An attitude structure consisting of three elements
• (1) A person and his/her perceptions of
• (2) an attitude object, and
• (3) some other person or object
• Marketing Applications of Balance
Theory
– Celebrity endorsements
7 - 13
Alternative Routes to
Restoring Balance in a Triad
Figure 7.2
7 - 14
Changing Attitudes
Through Communication
• Persuasion:
– An active attempt to change attitudes
– Basic psychological principles that influence
people to change their minds or comply with a
request:
•Reciprocity
•Scarcity
•Authority
•Consistency
•Liking
•Consensus
7 - 15
Decisions, Decisions:
Tactical Communications Options
• Who will be the source of the message?
– Man, woman, child, celebrity, athlete?
• How should message be constructed?
– Emphasize negative consequences?
– Direct comparison with competition?
– Present a fantasy?
• What media will transmit the message?
– Print ad, television, door-to-door, Web site?
• What are the characteristics of the target
market?
– Young, old, frustrated, status-oriented?
7 - 16
The Traditional Communications Model
Figure 8.1
7 - 17
An Updated Communications Model
Figure 8.2
7 - 18
The Source
• Source effects: A message will have different
effects if communicated by a different source.
• Two important source characteristics:
– Credibility and Attractiveness
• Source credibility: A source’s perceived
expertise, objectivity, or trustworthiness.
7 - 19
The Source (cont.)
• Building Credibility: Credibility can be enhanced if the
source’s qualifications are relevant to the product.
• Hype versus Buzz: The Corporate Paradox
– Corporate Paradox: The more involved a company appears
to be in the dissemination of news about its products, the
less credible it becomes.
• Buzz: Word of mouth, viewed as authentic
• Hype: Corporate propaganda, viewed as inauthentic
7 - 20
Source Attractiveness in Ads
• To stimulate demand
for milk, an industry
trade group tapped a
huge range of
celebrities to show off
their milk mustaches.
7 - 21
Star Power: Celebrities as
Communications Sources
• Cultural meanings:
– Symbolizes important categories such as status,
social class, gender, age, and personality type.
– Match up hypothesis: The celebrity’s image and
that of the product are similar
– Q rating (Q stands for quality) considers two
factors:
• Consumers’ level of familiarity with a name
• The number of respondents who indicate that a
person, program, or character is a favorite.
7 - 22
Would you buy something from this man?
• Who is the target market for Drew?
7 - 23
Sending the Message
• Repetition:
– Mere Exposure: People tend to like things that are
more familiar to them, even if they are not keen on
them initially.
– Habituation: Consumer no longer pays attention to
the stimulus because of boredom or fatigue
7 - 24
Constructing the Argument
• One- Versus Two-Sided Arguments:
– Supportive argument: Presents only positive
arguments
– Two-sided message: Presents positive and negative
info
• Comparative Advertising:
– A strategy in which a message compares two or
more recognized brands and compares them on the
basis of attributes.
7 - 25
Types of Message Appeals
• Emotional Versus Rational Appeals:
– Choice depends on the nature of the product and the type of
relationship that consumers have with it
– Recall of ad content tends to be better for “thinking” rather
than “feeling” ads
• Sexual Appeals:
– Sex draws attention to the ad but may be counterproductive
unless the product itself is related to sex
• Humorous Appeals:
– Distraction: Humorous ads inhibit the consumer from
counterarguing (thinking of reasons not to agree with the
message), increasing the likelihood of message acceptance
7 - 26
Emotional vs. Rational
• These ads demonstrate
rational versus emotional
message appeals. At the
time of the initial ad
campaign for the new
Infiniti automobiles, the
ads for rival Lexus (top)
emphasized design and
engineering, while the ads
for Infiniti (bottom) did not
even show the car.
7 - 27
Humor Appeals
• This ad relies upon humor to communicate the message
that skiers and snowboarders should wear helmets.
7 - 28
Personification
• Many products
are personified
by make-believe
characters.
7 - 29
The Source vs. The Message:
Sell the Steak or the Sizzle?
• Elaboration Likelihood Model (ELM):
– Assumes that once a customer receives a message, he or
she begins to process it.
• The Central Route to Persuasion:
– The processing route taken under conditions of high
involvement
– Cognitive Responses
• The Peripheral Route to Persuasion
– The processing route taken under conditions of low
involvement
– Peripheral Cues
7 - 30
The ELM Model
Figure 8.5
7 - 31
Support for the ELM
• The ELM has received a lot of research
support
• Example: Typical ELM Study
– Thought listing
– Independent variables:
• Message-processing involvement
• Argument strength
• Source characteristics
– Findings:
• High involvement subjects had more cognitions
• High involvement subjects swayed by powerful arguments
• Low involvement subjects influenced by attractive sources
7 - 32
Consumers As Problem Solvers
• A consumer purchase is a response to
a problem.
• Steps in the decision process:
–
–
–
–
(1) Problem recognition
(2) Information search
(3) Evaluation of alternatives
(4) Product choice
• Amount of effort put into a purchase
decision differs with each purchase.
7 - 33
Stages in Consumer Decision Making
Figure 9.1
7 - 34
CPM
The 8 Stages of Consumer
Information Processing
7 - 35
Illustrating the Decision-Making Process
• This ad by the U.S.
Postal Service
presents a problem,
illustrates the decisionmaking process, and
offers a solution.
7 - 36
Types of Consumer Decisions
• Extended Problem Solving:
– Corresponds to traditional decision-making
perspective
• Limited Problem Solving:
– People use simple decision rules to choose among
alternatives
• Habitual Decision Making:
– Choices made with little to no conscious effort
– Automaticity: Characteristic of choices made with
minimal effort and without conscious control
7 - 37
A Continuum of
Buying Decision Behavior
Figure 9.2
7 - 38
Problem Recognition
• Problem recognition:
– Occurs whenever the consumer sees a significant difference
between his or her current state of affairs and some desired
or ideal state
• Need recognition: The quality of the consumer’s actual state
moves downward
• Opportunity recognition: The consumer’s ideal state moves
upward
– Primary demand: Consumers are encouraged to use a
product or service regardless of the brand they choose
– Secondary demand: Consumers are encouraged to use a
specific brand – can only occur if primary demand exists
7 - 39
Information Search
• Types of Information Search:
– Prepurchase search: Consumer recognizes a need
and then searches the marketplace for specific
information
– Ongoing search: Browsing for fun or staying upto-date on what’s happening in the market
• Internal Versus External Search:
– Internal search: Scanning our own memory banks
for information about product alternatives
– External search: Obtaining product information
from advertisements, friends, or by observing
others
7 - 40
Do Consumers Always Search Rationally?
• Consumers don’t necessarily engage in
a rational search process
• Brand Switching:
– Changing brands even if the current brand satisfies
the consumer’s needs
• Sensory-specific satiety:
– A cause of variety seeking when there is relatively
little stimulation in the consumer’s environment
7 - 41
Rational Consumer?
• This Singaporean beer
ad reminds us that not
all product decisions
are made rationally.
7 - 42
Information Search
vs. Product Knowledge
Figure 9.5
7 - 43
Perceived Risk in Advertising
• Minolta features a norisk guarantee as a
way to reduce the
perceived risk in
buying an office copier.
7 - 44
Evaluation of Alternatives
• Identifying Alternatives:
– Evoked Set: Products already in memory (the
retrieval set) plus those prominent in the retail
environment
• Product Categorization:
– Categorization: Mentally placing a product with a
set of other comparable products
7 - 45
Levels of Abstraction
in Dessert Categories
Figure 9.7
7 - 46
Strategic Implications
of Product Categorization
• Product Positioning:
– Success of a positioning strategy depends on
convincing the consumer that the product should be
considered in the category.
• Identifying Competitors:
– Many products compete for membership in a
category
• Exemplar Products:
– Products which are a good example of a category
7 - 47
Product Positioning
• This ad for Sunkist lemon juice attempts to establish a
new category for the product by repositioning it as a salt
substitute.
7 - 48
Product Choice:
Selecting Among Alternatives
• Evaluative Criteria:
– Dimensions used to judge the merits of competing options
– Determinant Attributes: Attributes used to differentiate
among choices
• To recommend a new decision criteria, a
communication should:
– Point out that there are significant differences among brands
on the attribute
– Supply the consumer with a decision-making rule
– Convey a rule that can be integrated with how the person has
made this decision in the past
7 - 49
Choosing the Solution
• Lava soap lays out the options and invites us to choose
the solution.
7 - 50
Heuristics: Mental Shortcuts
• Heuristics:
– Mental rules-of-thumb that lead to a speedy decision
• Relying on a Product Signal:
– Product signal: Aspect of an item that visibly communicates
some underlying quality
– Covariation: Perceived associations among events that may or
may not influence one another
• Market Beliefs: Is It Better if I Pay More For It?
– Price-Quality Relationship: Pervasive market belief that
higher price means higher quality
7 - 51
Heuristics Simplify Choices
• Consumers often
simplify choices by
using heuristics such
as automatically
choosing a favorite
color or brand.
7 - 52
Country of Origin
• A product’s country of
origin is an important
piece of information in
the decision-making
process.
• Certain items are
strongly associated
with specific countries,
and products from
those countries often
attempt to benefit from
these linkages.
7 - 53
Qibla-Cola
7 - 54
Heuristics (conc.)
• Choosing Familiar Brand Names: Loyalty
or Habit?
– Brand loyalty is prized by marketers
• Inertia: The Lazy Consumer:
– Inertia: A brand is bought out of habit because less
effort is required
• Brand Loyalty: A “Friend,” Tried-andTrue:
– Brand parity: Consumers’ beliefs that there are no
significant differences between brands
7 - 55
Decision Rules
• Noncompensatory Decision Rules:
– Choice shortcuts where a product with a low
standing on one attribute cannot compensate by
being better on another attribute
• The Lexographic Rule
• The Elimination by Aspects Rule
• The Conjunctive Rule
• Compensatory Decision Rules:
– Give a product a chance to make up for its
shortcomings
• Simple Additive Rule
• Weighted Additive Rule
7 - 56