Chapter 6 Attitudes and Intentions Copyright © 2010 by the McGraw-Hill Companies, Inc. All rights reserved. McGraw-Hill/Irwin

6-2 What Is an Attitude?  Attitude is a person’s overall evaluation of a concept.  Evaluations are affective responses created by:  Affective systems  Cognitive systems  Overall evaluation is formed when consumers integrate knowledge, meanings, or beliefs about the attitude concept (integration process).  Analyzes the personal relevance of the concept and determines whether it is favorable or unfavorable.  Evaluations may be stored in memory.

6-3 What is an Attitude? cont.  Whether an attitude will affect interpretation or integration processes depends on its:  Accessibility in memory (or probability of activation), influenced by:  Salience or importance.  Frequency of prior activation.  Strength of the association between a concept and its attitude.  Attitudes can be measured by asking consumers to evaluate the concept of interest.

6-4 Attitudes Toward What?  Various physical and social objects  Intangible objects  Behaviors or actions

6-5 Levels of Attitude Concepts  Concepts vary in their levels of specificity:  Product class  Product form  Brand  Model  Brand/model general situation  Brand/model specific situation  Marketers must measure the attitude concept at the level of specificity most relevant to the marketing problem.

6-6 Exhibit Levels of Specificity of an Attitude Concept

6-7 What is an Attitude? - Marketing Implications  Brand equity involves a strong, positive brand attitude based on favorable meanings and beliefs that are accessible in memory.  Creates a strong, favorable consumer-brand relationship.  Can be built, borrowed, or bought.  Attitude tracking studies  Marketers can use measures of consumers’ attitudes to indicate the success of marketing strategies.

6-8 Attitudes Toward Objects  Salient beliefs  Activated beliefs.  Only salient beliefs about an object create a person’s attitude toward that object.  Many factors influence which beliefs about an object will be activated in a situation and thus become salient determinants of A o (attitude toward objects).  Salient beliefs vary over time or situations for some products.

6-9 The Multiattribute Attitude Model  Multiattribute attitude models focus on consumers’ beliefs about multiple product or brand attributes.  Martin Fishbein’s model is most influential in marketing.

6-10 The Multiattribute Attitude Model (cont.)  Key proposition  Evaluations of salient beliefs cause overall attitude.  Overall attitude is a function of two factors  Strengths of the salient beliefs associated with the object.  Evaluation of those beliefs.

6-11 The Multiattribute Attitude Model (cont.) A O = attitude toward the object b i = strength of the belief that the object has attribute i e i = evaluation of attribute i n = number of salient beliefs about the object

6-12 The Multiattribute Attitude Model (cont.)  Model components  Belief strength is the perceived probability of association between an object and its relative attributes.  Affected by past consumer experiences.  Number of salient beliefs about an attitude object unlikely to exceed seven to nine.  Belief evaluation reflects how favorably the consumer perceives that attribute.  Not necessarily fixed over time or constant across different situations

6-13 Attitudes Toward Objects - Marketing Implications  Understanding your customers.  Diagnosis of marketing strategies.  Understanding situational influences.

6-14 Attitude-Change Strategies  Add a new salient belief about the attitude object.  Increase the strength of an existing positive belief.  Improve the evaluation of a strongly held belief.  Make an existing favorable belief more salient.

6-15 Attitudes Toward Behavior  Most research has found rather weak relationships between attitudes toward an object and specific single behaviors.  It is not possible to predict with accuracy any specific behavior based on knowing a person’s overall attitude toward the object of the behavior.

6-16 Exhibit The Theory of Reasoned Action

6-17 The Theory of Reasoned Action cont.  Any reasonably complex voluntary behavior is determined by the person’s intention to perform that behavior.  Assumes consumers:  Consciously consider the consequences of alternative behaviors.  Choose the one that leads to the most desirable consequences.  Outcome is an intention to engage in the selected behavior.  The theory is not relevant for extremely simple or involuntary behaviors.

6-18 The Theory of Reasoned Action cont.  Model components  Behaviors are specific actions directed at some target object.  Behavioral intention is a proposition connecting self and a future action.  Attitude toward the behavior or action reflects the consumer’s overall evaluation of performing the behavior.  The subjective or social norm component reflects consumers’ perceptions of what other people want them to do.

6-19 Attitudes Toward Behavior - Marketing Implications  Situational context has powerful influences on consumers’ behavioral intentions.  To develop effective strategies  Determine whether the attitude toward the behavior or action or the subjective norm component has the major influence on behavioral intentions.  Measures of consumers’ intentions may not be perfect indicators of the actual intentions that determine the behavior.

6-20 Intentions and Behaviors  To accurately predict behaviors, marketers should measure consumers’ intentions at the same level of abstraction and specificity as the action, target, and time components of the behavior.  Situation context also should be specified when it is important.

6-21 Intentions and Behaviors (cont.)  Factors that reduce or weaken the relationship between measured behavioral intentions and observed behavior:  Intervening time  Different levels of specificity  Unforeseen environmental event  Unforeseen situational context  Degree of voluntary control  Stability of intentions  New information

6-22 Intentions and Behaviors (cont.)  Despite less-than-perfect accuracy, measures of purchase intentions are often the best way to predict future purchase behaviors.  Certain behaviors just cannot be accurately predicted from beliefs, attitudes, and intentions.

6-23 Summary  Attitude is a consumers’ overall evaluation of an object.  Attitude objects vary in levels of abstraction and specificity.  Discussed consumers’ attitudes toward objects and described Fishbein’s multiattribute model.

6-24 Summary (cont.)  The theory of reasoned action identifies consumers’ attitudes toward performing behaviors and social influences as the basis for behavioral intentions.  The problems of using measures of behavioral intentions to predict actual behaviors were discussed.

6-25 Summary (cont.)  Consumers’ activated knowledge is the basic factor underlying their attitudes, subjective norms, and intentions, and ultimately their behaviors.  Activated salient beliefs and the resulting attitudes and intentions are sensitive to situational factors in the environment, including marketing strategies.