Page 116 - DMGT506_CONSUMER_BEHAVIOUR

Sukhpreet Kaur, Lovely Professional University Unit 8: Attitude Formation and Change

Unit 8: Attitude Formation and Change Notes

CONTENTS
Objectives

Introduction
8.1 Attitude Formation

8.2 Strategies of Attitude Change
8.2.1 Multi-attribute Models and Attitude Change

8.2.2 Katz Functional Theory and Attitude Change
8.2.3 Elaboration Likelihood Model and Attitude Change

8.3 Post-purchase Attitude Change
8.3.1 Cognitive Dissonance Theory

8.3.2 Attribution Theory
8.4 Summary

8.5 Keywords
8.6 Self Assessment

8.7 Review Questions
8.8 Further Readings

Introduction

Attitudes cannot be directly observed but must be inferred from what people say or do. Attitudes
can be quite useful in building an understanding of why consumers prefer a particular store or
format. They can be used for judging the effectiveness of marketing activities - say, an advertising
campaign designed to increase sales by enhancing consumers' attitudes. But the sales can be
affected by many other factors. Thus, it is possible for advertising to have a positive impact on
store and its brands - and choose target segments. Consumers' attitudes, say, towards health and
fitness can have potent implications for many industries like cigarettes, liquor, fitness
equipments, and diet foods. Consumer's attitudes towards an advertisement can determine its
effectiveness.
According to Martin Fishbein, a more recent approach views attitudes as being multidimensional
as opposed to earlier definitions. According to this thinking, an individual’s overall attitude
towards an object is believed to be a function of (1) the strength of each belief (the consumer has
a number of beliefs) the individual holds about various attributes of the object and (2) the
evaluation she/he gives to each belief as it relates to the attitude object. Beliefs represent the
cognitive component and denote the probability an individual attaches to a given piece of
knowledge as being true.

LOVELY PROFESSIONAL UNIVERSITY 111