Attitudes and Persuasive Communications

It is important for consumer researchers to understand the nature and power of attitudes.

An attitude is a predisposition to evaluate an object orproduct positively or negatively. We form attitudes toward products and services, and these attitudes often determine whether we will purchase or not.

Attitudes are more complex than they first appear.

Three components make up an attitude: beliefs, affect, and behavioral intentions.

We form attitudes in several ways.

Attitude researchers traditionally assumed that we learn attitudes in a fixed sequence: First we form beliefs (cognitions) about an attitude object, then we evaluate that object (affect), and then we take some action (behavior). Depending on the consumer’s level of involvement and the circumstances, though, his attitudes can result from other hierarchies of effects as well. A key to attitude formation is the function the attitude holds for the consumer (e.g., is it utilitarian or ego defensive?).

A need to maintain consistency among all of our attitudinal components often motivates us to alter one or more of them.

One organizing principle of attitude formation is the importance of consistency among attitudinal components—thatis, we alter some parts of an attitude to be in line with others. Such theoretical approaches to attitudes as cognitive dissonance theory, self-perception theory, and balance theory stress the vital role of our need for consistency.

Attitude models identify specific components and combine them to predict a consumer’s overall attitude toward a product or brand.

Multiattribute attitude models underscore the complexity of attitudes: They specify that we identify and combine a set of beliefs and evaluations to predict an overall attitude. Researchers integrate factors such as subjective norms and the specificity of attitude scales into attitude measures to improve predictability.

The communications model identifies several important components for marketers when they try to change consumers’ attitudes toward products and services.

Persuasion refers to an attempt to change consumers’ attitudes. The communications model specifies the elements marketers need to transmit meaning. These include a source, a message, a medium, a receiver, and feedback.

The consumer who processes a message is not the passive receiver of information marketers once believed him or her to be.

The traditional view of communications regards the perceiver as a passive element in the process. New developments in interactive communications highlight the need to consider the active roles a consumer plays when he or she obtains product information and builds a relationship with a company. Advocates of permission marketing argue that it’s more effective to send messages to consumers who have already indicated an interest in learning about a product than trying to hit people “cold” with these solicitations.

Several factors influence the effectiveness of a message source.

Two important characteristics that determine the effectiveness of a source are its attractiveness and credibility. Although celebrities often serve this purpose, their credibility is not always as strong as marketers hope. Marketing messages that consumers perceive as buzz (those that are authentic and consumer generated) tend to be more effective than those they categorize as hype (those that are inauthentic, biased, and company generated).

The way a marketer structures his or her message determines how persuasive it will be.

Some elements of a message that help to determine its effectiveness include the following: conveyance of the message in words or pictures; employment of an emotional or a rational appeal; frequency of repetition; conclusion drawing; presentation of both sides of the argument; and inclusion of fear, humor, or sexual references. Advertising messages often incorporate elements from art or literature, such as dramas, lectures, metaphors, allegories, and resonance.

Many modern marketers are reality engineers.

Reality engineering occurs when marketers appropriate elements of popular culture to use in their promotional strategies. These elements include sensory and spatial aspects of everyday existence, whether in the form of products that appear in movies, scents pumped into offices and stores, billboards, theme parks, or video monitors attached to shopping carts.

Audience characteristics help to determine whether the nature of the source or the message itself will be relatively more effective.

The relative influence of the source versus the message depends on the receiver’s level of involvement with the communication. The Elaboration Likelihood Model (ELM) specifies that source effects are more likely to sway a less-involved consumer, whereas a more-involved consumer will be more likely to attend to and process components of the actual message.