Attitudes and Influencing Attitudes

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Attitudes and Influencing Attitudes

• John T. Drea
• Associate Professor of Marketing
• Western Illinois University

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Attitudes

• Defined an enduring organization of
  motivational, emotional, perceptual, and
  cognitive processes w/ respect to an aspect of
  the environment
• Attitudes are presumed to be the basis of
  intention, and intention is presumed to be the
  basis of behavior.

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Attitude components

• Cognitive, Affective, and Behavioral
• Cognitive beliefs and evaluations about specific
  attributes or the overall object.
• The most common mean of conceptualizing the
  cognitive component is through the multiattribute
  attitude model.

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Multiattribute Attitude Model

• Ab the sum of (Xib)
• Ab the sum of (WiXib)
• Ab the sum of (Wi Iib - Xib)
• where
• Xib the consumer's belief about the importance
  of the brand (b) on attribute I
• Wi the importance of a given attribute to the
  consumer
• Iib the ideal level of performance of the brand
  (b) on attribute i

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Determining importance of an attribute

• Asking consumers to assign a weight
• Ex How important is taste on a 1-7 scale?
• Consumers frequently decide all are important.
• Rank-ordering the attributes
• Ex Which attribute is most impt., 2nd, 3rd, etc.
• What if there are no real differences in
  importance for two attributes?
• Use a constant-sum scale
• Ex Assign 100 points among attributes
• More complicated

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Other components of an attitude

• Affective feelings, emotional reactions
  generated by an object.
• Can precede the cognitive/behavioral components
• Can follow the cognitive/behavioral components
• Behavioral an individuals tendency to respond
  in a certain manner toward an object or activity

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Attitude Change Strategies

• Option 1 Focus on the cognitive portion of
  attitude (beliefs)
• Changing currently held beliefs
• Adding new beliefs
• Changing the relative importance of certain
  beliefs
• Produces more enduring changes, less susceptible
  to counter argumentation

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Attitude Change Strategies

• Option 2 Focus on the affective portion of
  attitude (feelings)
• Typically achieved through the use of peripheral
  cues, which can be related to
• the source
• other stimuli in the message
• the context of the message
• This is a weaker route to attitude change
  (compared to the cognitive approach), producing
  less enduring changes

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Attitude Change Strategies

• Option 3 Focus on the behavioral portion of
  attitude
• Appropriate in situations where
• Consumer will not devote time to cognitive
  approaches, and an affective approach will not be
  strong enough to trigger a change
• The attitude is considered to be so trivial that
  the consumer will not consider counter-arguments
• Change the behavior first, followed by a change
  in attitude.

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Persuasive effects of communication

• In general, a source is more persuasive when its
  audience perceives it to be high in credibility.
  Source credibility is influenced by
• Expertise
• Status
• Similar physical characteristics
• When it argues against its own self interest, or
  the source is identified after the message

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Persuasive effects of communication (continued)

• A source is more persuasive when the source
  begins with views the audience is already in
  agreement with.
• A source is more persuasive when it has a
  positive (rather than negative) view of itself,
  the message, and the audience.