1. Chapter 7,8,9 review Attitudes, Attitude Change, and Decision Making
By Michael R. Solomon
Consumer Behavior
Buying, Having, and Being
Sixth Edition

2. 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.

3. 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)

4. 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.”

5. 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

6. Three Hierarchies of Effects
Figure 7.1

7. 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

8. 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.

9. 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

10. 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

11. 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.

12. 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.

13. Balance Theory Triad: Marketing Applications of Balance Theory
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

14. Alternative Routes to Restoring Balance in a Triad
Figure 7.2

15. 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

16. 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?

17. The Traditional Communications Model
Figure 8.1

18. An Updated Communications Model
Figure 8.2

19. 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.

20. 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

21. 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.

22. 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.

23. Would you buy something from this man?
Who is the target market for Drew?

24. 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

25. 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.

26. 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

27. 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.

28. Humor Appeals
This ad relies upon humor to communicate the message that skiers and snowboarders should wear helmets.

29. Personification
Many products are personified by make-believe characters.

30. 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

31. The ELM Model
Figure 8.5

32. 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

33. 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.

34. Stages in Consumer Decision Making
Figure 9.1

35. The 8 Stages of Consumer Information Processing
CPM
The 8 Stages of Consumer Information Processing

36. Illustrating the Decision-Making Process
This ad by the U.S. Postal Service presents a problem, illustrates the decision-making process, and offers a solution.

37. 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

38. A Continuum of Buying Decision Behavior
Figure 9.2

39. 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

40. 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 up-to-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

41. 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

42. Rational Consumer?
This Singaporean beer ad reminds us that not all product decisions are made rationally.

43. Information Search vs. Product Knowledge
Figure 9.5

44. Perceived Risk in Advertising
Minolta features a no-risk guarantee as a way to reduce the perceived risk in buying an office copier.

45. 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

46. Levels of Abstraction in Dessert Categories
Figure 9.7

47. 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

48. Product Positioning
This ad for Sunkist lemon juice attempts to establish a new category for the product by repositioning it as a salt substitute.

49. 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

50. Choosing the Solution
Lava soap lays out the options and invites us to choose the solution.

51. Heuristics: Mental Shortcuts
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

52. Heuristics Simplify Choices
Consumers often simplify choices by using heuristics such as automatically choosing a favorite color or brand.

53. 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.

54. Qibla-Cola

55. 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-and-True:
Brand parity: Consumers’ beliefs that there are no significant differences between brands

56. 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