Chapter 7
Attitudes and Attitude Change
© 2014 Cengage Learning. All Rights Reserved. May not be scanned, copied or duplicated, or posted to a publicly accessible website, in whole or in part.
1
Learning Outcomes
• Define attitudes and describe attitude
components
• Describe the functions of attitudes
• Understand how the hierarchy of effects
concept applies to attitude theory
© 2014 Cengage Learning. All Rights Reserved. May not be scanned, copied or duplicated, or posted to a publicly accessible website, in whole or in part.
2
Learning Outcomes
• Comprehend the major consumer attitude
models
• Describe attitude change theories and their
role in persuasion
• Understand how message and source effects
influence persuasion
© 2014 Cengage Learning. All Rights Reserved. May not be scanned, copied or duplicated, or posted to a publicly accessible website, in whole or in part.
Attitudes and its Components
• Attitude - Relatively enduring overall
evaluations of objects, products, services,
issues, or people
• Components - ABC approach to attitudes
– Affect
– Behavior
– Cognition
© 2014 Cengage Learning. All Rights Reserved. May not be scanned, copied or duplicated, or posted to a publicly accessible website, in whole or in part.
Functions of Attitude
• Functional theory of attitudes - Attitudes
perform four functions
– Utilitarian function
– Knowledge function
– Value-expressive function
– Ego-defensive function
© 2014 Cengage Learning. All Rights Reserved. May not be scanned, copied or duplicated, or posted to a publicly accessible website, in whole or in part.
Hierarchy of Effects
• High-involvement hierarchy
– Occurs when a consumer faces a high involvement
decision or addresses a significant problem
• Low-involvement hierarchy
– Consumers have some basic beliefs about
products without necessarily having strong
feelings toward them
© 2014 Cengage Learning. All Rights Reserved. May not be scanned, copied or duplicated, or posted to a publicly accessible website, in whole or in part.
Hierarchy of Effects
• Experiential hierarchy
– Purchases are motivated by feelings
• Behavioral influence hierarchy
– Some behaviors occur without either beliefs or
affect being strongly formed beforehand
© 2014 Cengage Learning. All Rights Reserved. May not be scanned, copied or duplicated, or posted to a publicly accessible website, in whole or in part.
Attitude-Toward-the-Object (ATO)
Model
• The ATO Model - Fishbein model
– Proposes that three key elements be assessed to
understand and predict consumer behavior
• Consumer beliefs about salient attributes
• Strength of the consumer belief
• Evaluation of the attribute
• ATO formula
© 2014 Cengage Learning. All Rights Reserved. May not be scanned, copied or duplicated, or posted to a publicly accessible website, in whole or in part.
Implications of the ATO Approach
• Attitude research is most often performed on
entire market segments
• Important for managers to know if consumers
believe that complexes offer relevant
attributes
© 2014 Cengage Learning. All Rights Reserved. May not be scanned, copied or duplicated, or posted to a publicly accessible website, in whole or in part.
Attitude–behavior Consistency
• Researchers are very interested in how
attitudes are formed
• Refers to the extent to which a strong
relationship exists between attitudes and
actual behavior
© 2014 Cengage Learning. All Rights Reserved. May not be scanned, copied or duplicated, or posted to a publicly accessible website, in whole or in part.
Factors That Weaken AttitudeBehavior Relationship
• Length of time between attitude
measurement and overt behavior
• Specificity with which attitudes are measured
• Strong environmental pressures
• Impulse-buying situations
© 2014 Cengage Learning. All Rights Reserved. May not be scanned, copied or duplicated, or posted to a publicly accessible website, in whole or in part.
Alternative Approaches to Attitude
• Theory of planned action
– Expands upon the behavioral intentions model by
including a perceived control component
© 2014 Cengage Learning. All Rights Reserved. May not be scanned, copied or duplicated, or posted to a publicly accessible website, in whole or in part.
Expanding the Attitude Object
• Attitude toward the advertisement
– Positive relationship exists between a consumer’s
attitude toward an advertisement and his or her
attitude toward a particular product
• Attitude toward the company
– What consumers know or believe about a
company can influence the attitude they have
toward its product
© 2014 Cengage Learning. All Rights Reserved. May not be scanned, copied or duplicated, or posted to a publicly accessible website, in whole or in part.
Attitude Tracking
• Extent to which a company actively monitors
its customers’ attitudes over time
© 2014 Cengage Learning. All Rights Reserved. May not be scanned, copied or duplicated, or posted to a publicly accessible website, in whole or in part.
Persuasion
• Refers to specific attempts to change attitudes
• Persuasive techniques
– ATO approach
– Behavioral influence approach
– Changing schema-based affect
– Elaboration likelihood model
– Balance theory approach
– Social judgment theory approach
© 2014 Cengage Learning. All Rights Reserved. May not be scanned, copied or duplicated, or posted to a publicly accessible website, in whole or in part.
Attitude-Toward-the-Object Approach
• Changing beliefs
• Adding beliefs about new attributes
• Changing evaluations
© 2014 Cengage Learning. All Rights Reserved. May not be scanned, copied or duplicated, or posted to a publicly accessible website, in whole or in part.
Behavioral Influence Approach
• Directly changing behaviors without first
attempting to change either beliefs or feelings
• Behavior change can precede belief and
attitude change
© 2014 Cengage Learning. All Rights Reserved. May not be scanned, copied or duplicated, or posted to a publicly accessible website, in whole or in part.
Changing Schema-Based Affect
• Schema-based affect refers to the idea that
schemas contain affective and emotional
meanings
• If the affect found in a schema can be
changed, then:
– The attitude toward a brand or product will
change as well
© 2014 Cengage Learning. All Rights Reserved. May not be scanned, copied or duplicated, or posted to a publicly accessible website, in whole or in part.
© 2014 Cengage Learning. All Rights Reserved. May not be scanned, copied or duplicated, or posted to a publicly accessible website, in whole or in part.
© 2014 Cengage Learning. All Rights Reserved. May not be scanned, copied or duplicated, or posted to a publicly accessible website, in whole or in part.
© 2014 Cengage Learning. All Rights Reserved. May not be scanned, copied or duplicated, or posted to a publicly accessible website, in whole or in part.
Message and Source Effects
• Message effects - Describe how the appeal of
a message and its construction affect
persuasion
• Source effects - Refer to the characteristics of
the person or character delivering a message
that influence persuasion
© 2014 Cengage Learning. All Rights Reserved. May not be scanned, copied or duplicated, or posted to a publicly accessible website, in whole or in part.
Message Appeal
• Appeals impact the persuasiveness of an
advertisement
– Sex appeals
– Humor appeals
– Fear appeals
– Violence appeals
© 2014 Cengage Learning. All Rights Reserved. May not be scanned, copied or duplicated, or posted to a publicly accessible website, in whole or in part.
Message Construction
• The way a message is constructed also
impacts its persuasiveness
– Conclusion presentation
– Comparative strategy
– Placement of information
• Serial position effect
• Primary effect
• Recency effect
– Message complexity
© 2014 Cengage Learning. All Rights Reserved. May not be scanned, copied or duplicated, or posted to a publicly accessible website, in whole or in part.
Source Effects
• Credibility
– Expertise
– Trustworthiness
• Attractiveness
• Likeability
• Meaningfulness
– Match-up hypothesis - Source feature is most
effective when it is matched with relevant
products
© 2014 Cengage Learning. All Rights Reserved. May not be scanned, copied or duplicated, or posted to a publicly accessible website, in whole or in part.