1. Attitudes and Intentions
Chapter 6
Attitudes and Intentions

2. What is an Attitude? Attitude
A person’s overall evaluation of a concept
Affective responses created by the affective and cognitive systems
An overall evaluation is formed when consumers integrate knowledge, meanings, or beliefs about the attitude concept

3. What is an Attitude? cont.

4. What is an Attitude? cont.
Goal of the integration process is to analyze the personal relevance of the concept and determine whether it is favorable or unfavorable
Evaluations produced by the attitude formation process may be stored in memory

5. What is an Attitude? cont.
Whether a given attitude will affect interpretation or integration processes depends on its accessibility in memory or its probability of activation
Factors that can influence the accessibility of attitudes
Measuring attitudes

6. What is an Attitude? cont.
Attitudes toward what?
Various physical and social objects
Intangible objects
Behaviors or actions

7. What is an Attitude? cont.
Levels of attitude concepts
Levels of specificity
Product class
Product form
Brand
Model
Brand/model general situation
Brand/model specific situation
Marketers must precisely identify the attitude concept at the level of specificity most relevant to the marketing problem of interest

8. What is an Attitude? cont.

9. What is an Attitude? cont.
Marketing implications
Brand equity
Involves a strong, positive brand attitude
Based on favorable meanings and beliefs
Accessible in memory
Creates a strong, favorable consumer-brand relationship

10. What is an Attitude? cont.
Can obtain brand equity in three ways
Build it
Borrow it
Buy it
Attitude tracking studies
Marketers can use measures of consumers’ attitudes to indicate the success of marketing strategies

11. Attitudes Toward Objects

12. Attitudes Toward Objects cont.
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 Ao
Salient beliefs vary over time or situations for some products

13. Attitudes Toward Objects cont.
The multiattribute attitude model

14. Attitudes Toward Objects cont.
Fishbein theory
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

15. Attitudes Toward Objects cont.
Model components
Belief strength
Perceived probability of association between an object and its relative attributes
Affected by past consumer experiences with an object
Typical number of salient beliefs about an attitude object unlikely to exceed seven to nine

16. Attitudes Toward Objects cont.
Belief evaluation
Reflects how favorably the consumer perceives that attribute
Not necessarily fixed over time or constant across different situations
Marketing implications
Understanding customers
Diagnosis of marketing strategies
Understanding situational influences

17. Attitudes Toward Objects cont.
Attitude-change strategies
Adding a new salient belief about the attitude object
Increasing the strength of an existing positive belief
Improving the evaluation of a strongly held belief
Making an existing favorable belief more salient

18. Attitudes Toward Behavior
Most research has found rather weak relationships between attitudes toward an object and specific single behaviors

19. Attitudes Toward Behavior cont.
The theory of reasoned action

20. Attitudes Toward Behavior cont.
Assumes consumers consciously consider the consequences of alternative behaviors under consideration and choose the one that leads to the most desirable consequences
Outcome is an intention to engage in the selected behavior
Proposes that any reasonably complex voluntary behavior is determined by the person’s intention to perform that behavior

21. Attitudes Toward Behavior cont.
The theory is not relevant for extremely simple or involuntary behaviors
Model components
Behaviors (B)
Behavioral intention (BI)
Attitude toward the behavior or action (Aact)
The subjective or social norm (SN)

22. Attitudes Toward Behavior cont.
Marketing implications
The situational context in which behavior occurs can have powerful influences on consumers’ behavioral intentions
To develop effective strategies, it is important to determine whether the Aact or SN component has the major influence on behavioral intentions

23. Attitudes Toward Behavior cont.
Although intentions determine most voluntary behaviors, measures of consumers’ intentions may not be perfect indicators of the actual intentions that determine the behavior

24. Intentions and Behaviors
Factors that can weaken the relationship between measured behavioral intentions and the observed behaviors of interest
Intervening time
Different levels of specificity
Unforeseen environmental event
Unforeseen situational context

25. Intentions and Behaviors cont.
Degree of voluntary control
Stability of intentions
New information

26. 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

27. Summary
Defined attitude as a consumers’ overall evaluation of an object
Discussed how attitude objects varied in levels of abstraction and specificity
Discussed consumers’ attitudes toward objects and described Fishbein’s multiattribute model of how salient beliefs create attitudes toward objects

28. Summary cont.
Discussed the theory of reasoned action, which identifies consumers’ attitudes toward performing behaviors and social influences as the basis for behavioral intention
Considered the problems of using measures of behavioral intentions to predict actual behaviors

29. Summary cont.
Identified consumers’ activated knowledge, in the form of beliefs, as a basic factor underlying their attitudes, subjective norms, and intentions, and ultimately their behaviors
Showed that these activated salient beliefs and the resulting attitudes and intentions are sensitive to situational factors in the environment, including marketing strategies