MKTG 351: Ch 8

Cognitive Dissonance Theory

discomfort or dissonance occurs when a consumer holds conflicting thoughts about a belief or an attitude object (p 252)

Attributions Towards Others

Questioning other's acts; asking "why"; evaluating the words or deeds of others, a consumer tries to determine if their motives are in the consumer's best interests (p 255)

TCAM: The Conative Component

concerned with the likelihood or tendency that an individual will undertake a specific action, or behave in a particular way with regard to the attitude object. (p 233)

The Tri-Component Attitude Model

consists of 3 major components: Cognitive, Affective, and Conative (p 231)

Consumers are willing to reward

high-effort firms if they feel that the company has made the extra effort to make a better product, or provide better consumer services (p 254)

Extension of the TRA Model - Theory of Planned Behavior

includes an additional factor leading to "intention" - the construct of perceived behavioral control (PBC), which is a consumer's perception of whether the behavior is or not within their control (p 236)

Peripheral route

when a consumer's motivation or assessment skills are low (low involvement), learning and attitude change tends to occur without the consumer focusing on information relevant to the attitude object itself. In such cases, attitude change is an outcome of secondary inducements (coupons, samples, etc.) (p 250-251)

External attributions

when you give credit to outside sources for the outcome (p 254, with example)

Internal attributions

when you give yourself credit for the outcome (p 254, with example)

TCAM: Affective component

A consumer's emotion or feelings about a particular product or brand. (p 232)

Examination of attitude formation is divided into 3 areas:

How attitudes are learned, the sources of influence on attitude formation, and the impact of personality on attitude formation. (p 238)

Low NFC

are more likely to form positive attitudes in response to ads that feature an attractive model or well-known celebrity (p 241)

Attitudes occur within a Situation

"Situation": events or circumstances that at a particular point in time, influence the relationship between an attitude and a behavior. (p 229)

intention-to-buy scales

(p 233, graph on top)

TRA Intention

(p 235)

Attitude toward the ad models

(p 237-238)

How attitudes are learned

(p 238-240)

Combining several functions

(p 243-244)

Associating the product with a special group, event, or cause

(p 243-251)

Behavior Can Precede or Follow Attitude Formation

(p 252 - 257)

defensive attribution

(p 255)

Strategies of Attitude Change

(pg 242- 243)

The Attitude "Object"

Attitude research is typically "object-specific"; what the research is trying to learn more about (p 228)

Value-expressive function

Attitudes are an expression or reflection of the consumer's general values, lifestyle, and outlook. (p 242)

Attitudes are "Learned"

Attitudes relevant to purchase behavior are formed as a result of direct experience with the product, word-of-mouth information acquired from others, exposure to mass-media advertising, the internet, and various forms of direct marketing. (p 228-229)

Functional Approach

Changing consumer attitudes toward a product or brand to make particular needs prominent (p 242-243)

TRA has 3 components

Cognitive, affective, and conative, but they are arranged in a different order than the tri-component model (p 235)

MAM: Consumer characteristics

Figure 8.4 (p 235)

Attitudes have "Consistency"

Generally, attitudes are relatively consistent with the behavior they reflect. However, attitudes are not necessarily permanent. (p 229)

Knowledge function

Individuals generally have a strong "need to know" and understand people and things they encounter. Marketers can satisfy this by emphasizing its advantages over competitive brands (p 242-243)

Self-perception Theory

Individuals' inferences or judgments as to the causes of their own behavior (p 254)

Direct marketing

Marketers very carefully target customers on the basis of their demographic, psychographic, or geo-demographic profiles with highly personalized product offerings (ex: watches for left-hand people) and messages that show they understand their special needs and desires. (p 240)

Ego-defensive function

Most people want to protect their self-images from inner feelings of doubt - they want to replace their uncertainty with a sense of security and personal confidence. (Ex: ads for cosmetics and fashion) (p 242)

Family and friends

The family is an extremely important source of influence on the formation of attitudes, because family provides many of our basic values and a wide less of central beliefs (p 240)

TCAM: Cognitive component

The person's knowledge and perceptions that are acquired by a combination of direct experience with the attitude object and related information from various sources. (p 231-232)

Personal Experience

The primary means by which attitudes towards good and services are formed is through consumer's direct experience, in trying and evaluating them (p 240)

Structural Models of Attitudes

The tri-component model, the multi-attribute model, the trying-to-consume model, and the attitude-toward-the-ad model. (p 231)

4 Functions of the Functional Approach

Utilitarian, ego-defensive, value-expressive, and knowledge (p 242)

Utilitarian Function

When a product has been useful, or helped us in the past, our attitude toward it tends to be favorable. One way of changing attitudes in favor of a product is by showing people that it can serve a utilitarian purpose that they may not have considered. (p 242, with example)

Attitude

a learned predisposition to behave in a consistently favorable or unfavorable manner with respect to a given object. (p 228)

High NFC

are likely to form positive attitudes in response to ads, or direct mail that are rich in product-related information (p 241)

Niche marketing

also called micromarketing (p 240)

Research indicates that such emotional states may

amplify or enhance positive and negative experiences and that later recollections of such experiences may impact what comes to mind and how the individual acts. (p 232-233)

Attribution Theory

attempts to explain how people assign causality (blame, or credit) to events on the basis of either their own behavior or the behavior of others (p 254)

TRA Subjective Norms

can be measured directly by assessing a consumer's feelings as to what relevant others (family, friends, roommates, coworkers) would think of the action being contemplated (p 235)

The Theory of Trying to consume

designed to account for the many cases in which the action or outcome is not certain, but reflects the consumer's attempts to consumer (purchase) (pg 237)

MAM: Attitude-toward-behavior model

designed to capture the individual's attitude toward behaving or acting with respect to an object rather than the attitude toward the object itself. (p 235)

Self-perception theory suggests that attitudes

develop as consumers look at and make judgments about their own behavior (p 254, with example)

Direct experience tends to be

more confidently held, more enduring, and more resistant to attack than those who developed through indirect experience (ex: reading a print ad) (p 240)

Central route

particularly relevant to attitude change when a consumer's motivation, or ability to assess the attitude object is high; attitude change change occurs because the consumer actively seeks out information relevant to the attitude object itself (p 250)

Personality factors

plays a critical role in attitude formation (p 241)

Multi-attribute Models

portray customers' attitudes with regard to an attitude object as a function of consumers' perception and assessment of key attributes or beliefs held with regard to the particular attitude object (p 233-236)

The Elaboration Likelihood Model (ELM)

proposes the more global view that consumer attitudes are changed by two distinctly different "routes to persuasion": a central route, or a peripheral route (p 250-251)

Mass media communications

provide an important source of information that influences the formation of consumer attitudes. Other research indicates that for consumers who lack direct experience with a product, exposure to an emotionally appealing advertising message is more likely to create an attitude toward the product than for consumers who have beforehand secured direct experience with the product category. (p 240)

Post-purchase dissonance propels marketers to

reduce the unpleasant feelings created by the rival thoughts (p 253)

Theory-of-reasoned-action (TRA) method

represents a comprehensive integration of attitude components into a structure that is designed to lead to both better explanation and better predictions of behavior (p 235-236)

Sources of Influence on Attitude Formation

strong influenced by personal experience, the influence of family and friends, direct marketing, mass media, and the internet (p 240-241)

Attribution Towards Things

the area of judging product performance that consumers are most likely to form product attributions; specifically, they want to find out why a product meets or fails to meet their expectations (p 256)

MAM: Attitude-toward-object model

the consumer's attitude toward a product or specific brands of a product is a function of the presence (or absence) and evaluation of certain product-specific beliefs and/or attributes. In other words, consumers generally have a favorable attitudes toward those brands that they believe have an adequate level of attributes that they evaluate as positive, and vice versa. (p 233-234)