CHAPTER
Human Pursuit of Happiness .......
7
Attitudes
Consumer Attitudes:
Know-Feel-Do Models
Knowing What to Want and What to Shun
Nurse Your
Thirst
Image
A message.
An image.
A thought.
A feeling.
Your attitude.
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2:30/3:00
OBJECTIVES
1. The Definition
of Attitude and Its
Properties
2. The ABC Model
of Attitude and Its
Measurement
3. Know-Feel-Do
Hierarchies and
How
Involvement
Affects Them
4. Four Functions
That Attitudes
Serve for
Consumers
5. A Theory of
Reasoned
Action and Its
Application in
Consumer Brand
Attitudes
6. Three Routes to
Molding Attitudes—
Convincing,
Charming, and
Inducing the
Consumer
PART II
I NS I D E T H E C O N S U ME R ’ S M I N D
To understand and be able to explain:
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CONSUMER BEHAVIOR
.......in the World of Goods
What is the Point of OK?
(What is the Point of Anything?)
OK
—it was the name Coca-Cola Company gave its new citrus-flavored
soda concoction, back in Summer 1994, targeted at young adults.
The taste was a cross between Dr. Pepper, Lemonade, and Coca Cola,
and in pre-launch taste tests, young consumers had liked it—saying it
was different and it had, well, oomph!
The can was decorated with facial images of apparently
young people with no particular expression. A message
around the lip of the can read: “OK soda says ‘Don’t
be fooled into thinking there has to be a reason for
Image
everything.’” According to one comment, the company
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wanted to appeal to teenagers and Gen Y consumers—who
had a “sense of themselves as sardonic and unsurprizable
(‘Yeah—it’s OK, I s’pose’).” It tried to soothe teen angst and
anxiety. One brand slogan read: OK-ness is the belief that, no
matter what, things are going to be OK.
By Summer 1995, a year after its introduction, the
company decided to pull the brand. The teens and youth
it targeted just did not see the brand as echoing their
emotions. In one of the brand slogans, the company used a rhetorical
question: “What is the point of OK? What is the point of anything?” The
consumer seemed to have replied. “Nothing. Nothing is the point of
‘OK,’” they seemed to say—and they didn’t want nothing!*
INTRODUCTION
The story of OK soda carries an important lesson for all students of
marketing. It does not matter what a marketer says a product is or will do.
What matters is what consumers come to think of it. The teen and youth of
that time period did not think well of OK soda. And based on this opinion,
they acted—tossing the brand into the dustbin of history. This fate is meted
out to thousands of brands every year.
Before we rush to gloat over our insight as to how the OK Soda idea
was doomed to fail, let us remember it is hindsight, not foresight. Indeed,
OK soda briefly enjoyed a cult following, active even years after it was
officially withdrawn. Fans reminisced in newsgroups at alt.fan.ok-soda and
held onto unopened and opened soda cans as keepsakes. You can find some
unopened cans on eBay even today. There is no telling if the campaign
wouldn’t have succeeded if continued longer, or in another place and time.
A product’s success and failure alike depend on consumer attitudes, and
this is our point.
_______________________________________________________________
*Based on various sources including “OK Marketing— A retrospective of the OK marketing campaign by suck.com (February 14, 1996), www.suck.com/daily/96/02/14/daily.htm;
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/OK_Soda; www.geocities.com/the_dolce/ok.html.
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II
PART
174
INSIDE THE CONSUMER’S MIND
At this very moment, thousands of marketers are pitching their products and services to millions of consumers around the world. Standing at consumers’ doorsteps, on
the telephone, at business expos, at the mall, on eBay’s auction Web site, through TV and
radio ads, at upscale boutiques in Florence and Madrid, and from thousands of trailer
trucks at flea markets around the world. Are consumers listening to them? How are they
reacting to this cacophony of slogans and promises, and to that visual parade of product
images? Aside from these marketers of material goods, also soliciting the favorable opinion
of consumers are charities, schools, tourist spots, casinos and nightclubs, films, TV shows,
sports teams, and even presidential candidates. How do consumers come to form an opinion about these entities? What persuades them to embrace some of these marketplace offerings—while spurning others? And how can marketers win favorable consumer reactions
to their offerings?
This chapter is our answer to these questions. In this chapter, we explain the concept
of attitude—the supreme precursor to all of our actions in the marketplace. We take you
deep inside the mind of the consumer and witness the dynamic interplay of our thoughts,
feelings, and intentions. Here you will also meet TOVA, TORA, and TOTA—no, it is not
the name of a new rendition of Depeche Mode’s 1981 album or of some mountains in
Afghanistan; these are, instead, the nicknames of three models of attitude.
We also take a look at the motivational basis of attitudes, explaining the four functions that attitudes serve for us, and through examples we invite you to examine the motivations for some of your own deeply held attitudes—attitudes toward people (stereotypes)
and attitudes toward products. Understanding attitudes can help you fashion your market
offerings—advertising and all—to be consumer friendly. This chapter is a key, in other
words, to getting consumers to developing a good attitude toward your product offerings,
and, consequently, to throw some dough your way. It is also a key to avoiding the fate of
OK Soda. Read on.
A ttitude :
de f inition
Do You Have it?
Do you have an attitude? Toward Eminem and his music? Towards the New England
football team, the Patriots? Toward the Michael Vick Dog Jersey from Philadelphia Eagles
(introduced in August 2009)? Do you like or dislike them? And which college courses did
you like the most? The least? What is your attitude toward this book? What do you think
of GoDaddy.com’s Superbowl commercials featuring Danica Patrick? Do pop-up ads on
the Internet bother you? Which is your favorite drink—Coke, Pepsi, or the Dew? And if
OK Cola were introduced today, would you have had a more favorable reaction? All of
these questions are designed to elicit your attitudes. So, just what is an attitude?
In common parlance, when we refer to your attitude, we simply refer to your “like”
or “dislike” of something, your opinion about something. If you like something, then your
attitude toward it is positive; if you dislike it, then your attitude is negative. However, to
understand fully the nature of attitudes, we need to examine a classic definition of attitudes, offered by psychologist Gordon Allport: Attitudes are learned predispositions to
respond to an object in a consistently favorable or unfavorable way.1
This definition has several elements:
• Attitudes are learned. That is, no one is born with them. You were not born
with an attitude toward Eminem, Michael Vick, the Patriots, Coke, or Pepsi, for example, were you? Instead, you learned them during your time here on this earth. And
how did you learn them? On the basis of some experience with or information about
these things or persons.
• They are targeted toward an object or a class of objects. If we ask
you, what is your attitude or what is your opinion, you would ask, “Opinion about
what” or “Attitude toward what?” That “what” is the “object” in our definition—atCONSUMER BEHAVIOR
Consumer Attitudes
7
CHAPTER
titude toward an object. And that object can be anything—a brand, a product, a
company, a class, a movie, a presidential candidate, and even an idea (e.g., the idea of
‘freedom of speech’). Thus, we hold different attitudes toward different objects.
• Attitudes cause response. That is, they are the reason we respond, or act, in
a certain way toward these objects. Thus, we drink Coke and avoid Pepsi (or the other
way around) because of our attitudes toward Coke and Pepsi. And our attitude toward
Eminem and his music makes us buy or not buy his albums.
• The response that attitudes cause is consistent. Thus, we don’t buy
Eminem’s music today and avoid it tomorrow. And we don’t choose Coke today and
Pepsi tomorrow (unless our attitudes toward each are equally favorable). Instead, we
act toward a given object the same way over a period of time; i.e., consistently.
• Attitude is a predisposition. By predisposition, we mean it is our “inclination.” Thus, it resides in our minds. We are predisposed to doing something or not
doing something. Like we are predisposed (or inclined) to buy Eminem’s music, and
we are predisposed to drink Coke and not drink Pepsi.
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Image
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If you have never seen this Japanese watch before, then you can’t possibly have an attitude toward it.
Because no one is born with attitudes.
Now look at it, grasp how time is read on this watch, and then decide if you like or dislike it.
You now have an attitude, and we mean attitude toward the watch. You just learned it. And now
you want to get one—that is your response. You want it today, and you would want it tomorrow
(consistency), unless, of course, you change your attitude itself (toward the watch). You will buy it as
soon as the opportunity arises (predisposition). You can buy it from www.tokyoflash.com.
YOUR ATTITUDE IS WAITING FOR ACTION!!!
Predisposition
Pregnant with Meaning
This word, predisposition, is a wonderful word, pregnant with rich meaning. It is the
key to the concept of attitude and to understanding the true nature of this concept. No
other term can cut it as well. We could say, for example, that an attitude is your opinion
about something, and broadly speaking we would be right, but opinion is what you think
of something. That is all. It is not quite the same thing as predisposition. We could say
attitude is your general evaluation of something—whether you view it as a good thing or a
bad thing—and we would be approximately right. But the word evaluation does not quite
capture it either. Predisposition—it means you have something in your mind—a thought,
an opinion, an evaluation, a view, even a feeling—and that you are going to do something
about it. You are going to act toward the object of your attitude. Predisposition makes you
inclined to act. Thus, an attitude is our mental code to release some action toward something. It is an action in waiting.
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