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Unit 8: Attitude Formation and Change

toothpaste is trying to convince this group of consumers that it is 100 per cent vegetarian Notes
and approved by Vegetarian Society of London. A large segment of the younger generation
in our country has positive feelings toward wearing latest fashion clothes and most ads of
ready to wear garments are capitalising on this value-expression function.
3. Changing Attitude through Ego-defensive Function: Very strongly held attitudes often
serve the ego-defensive function and are least likely to accept outside influences. A cigarette
smoker or tobacco chewer is quite likely to ignore any information about the dangers
associated with smoking or tobacco chewing. This is an ego-defensive function and results
in an attempt to deliberately avoid painful information. A positive advertising approach
would be to suggest the steps that they can take to minimise or reduce the usage of
towards. Such an approach may prove to be helpful in influencing attitudes.

4. Changing Attitudes through the Knowledge Function: This approach of changing attitudes
is based on consumers’ cognitive needs. Knowledge function facilitates the information-
processing task. Most marketers attempt to create a clear and unambiguous positioning
for their brands to develop favourable consumer attitudes. Apple computers have created
a definite positioning and communicated detailed information to convince consumers
about the superiority of its different models. Apple’s customers have developed strong
attitudes and would not change to any other brand of computers.

Had Apple decided to make its processors and other components available in the open market
for assemblers, probably Apple would have failed to create such strong positioning.

8.2.3 Elaboration Likelihood Model and Attitude Change

As discussed earlier, under conditions of high-involvement, consumers process information
through a “central route.” They deliberately and consciously examine and process message
elements that in their belief have relevance to a meaningful and logical evaluation of the brand.
Under conditions of low-involvement, consumers use more “peripheral route” in which
non-message elements such as music, colour or spokesperson are more likely to be processed.
This means that under high-involvement conditions, attitude change can best be accomplished
through messages that convey information about product attributes, benefits and performance.
Under conditions of low-involvement, attitude change can best be achieved through the use of
effective spokesperson and brand-symbols.

Example: To influence consumers’ attitudes, different competing brands of soft drinks
are using famous film stars and sports personalities as the spokespersons.
ELM model also considers the importance of consumers’ thoughts (referred to as cognitive
responses) when they are processing marketing related messages. According to this thinking,
under conditions of high-involvement, consumers produce thoughts that are more relevant to
messages. For instance, a weight-conscious consumer who sees an ad of Personal Point Weight
Reduction Programme may think, “This looks like quite a promising programme, I think I
should join it.” Or, the consumer may think, “I don’t believe their claims, no one can lose weight
so fast without serious repercussions.” In the first case, the thoughts support the ad message and
are called Support Arguments (SAs). The second type of thinking represents Counter Argument
(CAs) to the ad message. The presence of such thoughts indicates that the consumer is processing
information in a high-involvement context.

Under conditions of low-involvement, consumers may react with thoughts about the model’s
looks, spokesperson’s voice or dress, or the background etc., which are all peripheral cues and
not related to the ad message. For example, a consumer who is not interested in weight-loss
or gain may think, “ Personal Point is a modern organisation and they have used a very

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