Attitude change and Persuasion

TOPIC 4

1.ATTITUDES DEFINITIONS AND FUNCTIONS

ATTITUDES

• Attitude:
- A lasting, general evaluation of people (including oneself), objects,
advertisements, or issues.
- A predisposition to evaluate an object or product positively or negatively.

2 TYPES OF ATTITUDES IN MARKETING:

- Attitude toward objects (e.g. products, brands)
- Attitudes toward actions/behaviors

KATZ’S ATTITUDE FUNCTIONS

• UTILITARIAN FUNCTION
– Attitude helps to decide whether a product provides positive/negative
outcomes (pleasure and pain)
• VALUE-EXPRESSIVE FUNCTION
– Attitude helps to decide whether a product expresses about the
consumer’s self-concept and values
• EGO-DEFENSIVE FUNCTION
– Attitude helps to decide whether a product protects the consumer from
external/internal threats
• KNOWLEDGE FUNCTION
– Attitudes formed as the result of a need for order, structure or meaning.
 Examples of attitudes functions:

1st Reason to wear black:

“Black makes me less of a “girly” man”
• Function:
Ego-Defensive
• Persuasion:
- Black is a macho color

2º Reason to wear black:

“I’m a Goth. Black is my color”
• Function:
Value-Expressive
• Persuasion:
Black is the color of Goth

2. ATTITUDE CHANGE

ATTITUDE CHANGE
To create a favorable attitude towards your brand, you can do the following:
o Create positive associations with the brand
o Change the beliefs about attributes of the brand
o Compare your brand with other brands and show you superiority
o Change the importance of specific attribute
o Add a new and important attribute

THREE WAYS TO INFLUENCE ATTITUDES

1. Attitude-based (directly)
– classical conditioning
 2. Belief-based
– persuasion
3. Evaluation-based
– information, prime

2.1 CHANGING ATTITUDES DIRECTLY VIA COMMUNICATION

A Behaviorist Perspective on Learning The Consumer as a “Black Box”

CONDITIONING THEORIES

- Classical: Ivan Palov

- Instrumental or Operant: Burrhus F.Skinner

PAVLOV’S EXPERIMENT- PHASE 1

• Food (US) leads to Salivation (UR)

• Tone (CS): No response
PAVLOV’S EXPERIMENT- PHASE 2
• Tone (CS) is repeatedly paired with Food (US)
– Tone is sounded before the food is presented

PAVLOV’S EXPERIMENT- PHASE 3

• The tone (CS) elicits a new CR

– The tone by itself causes salivation

MODELS OF CLASSICAL CONDITIONING: PAVLOV’S DOG

CLASSICAL CONDITIONING

• Unconditioned stimulus (US) – Naturally capable of causing a response

• Conditioned stimulus (CS) – Does not initially cause a response
• Conditioned response (CR) – Response generated by repeated paired
exposures to US and CS.
• Eventually, through learned association and repetition, the CS will cause the
CR

CLASSICAL CONDITIONING IN MARKETING

• Brands (CS) should be paired with a strong US

– emotional responses and positive feelings (UR) associated with the US
should spill over to the brand
– after repetition, brand should elicit the same emotional responses and
positive feelings (CR)
• Important is finding a strong US to which a product can be paired
– e.g. babies, sexy models, beautiful scenery

CONDITIONS FOR CLASSICAL CONDITION

• Forward conditioning: CS should be before US
• US and CS belong logically to each other
• Better to have a CS that is novel and unfamiliar
• Better to have a US that is biologically or symbolically salient
• Repetition

REPETITION
• Conditioning effects are more likely to occur after the CS and the US have
been paired a number of times
– Contiguity: consistent pairing of product with UCS
• When the US is not paired with the CS ®
Extinction

Too much repetition ® Advertising wear-out

 • Optimal amount of exposures to a marketing communication = 3
– 1st exposure = creating brand awareness
– 2nd exposure = demonstrate relevance to consumer
– 3rd exposure = remind the product's benefits
• “Wear-out” problem – people are tired to see the same repeated many times

STIMULUS GENERALIZATION
• Tendency of a stimulus similar to a CS to evoke similar, conditioned responses
– e.g., Pavlov's dogs also started to salivated on the sound of key jangling
(sound similar to the ringing of a bell)

STIMULUS DISCRIMINATION
Unique combination of CS and UCS
- Ability to differentiate between a CS and other stimuli that have not been
paired with an US.
- Stimulus discrimination occurs when an US does not follow a stimulus
similar to a CS. When this happens, reactions weaken and will soon
disappear.
- Example: Apple wants consumers to resist other lower priced smartphones
that use a similar touch screen design but are not the genuine iPhone.

2.2 CHANGING BELIEFS VIA COMMUNICATION

PERSUASION
• Belief-based attitude change
– Arguments = explicit reason-why
– Cues / heuristics = implicit reason-why

Beliefs are easier to change than evaluations!!!

Why? Evaluations are often linked to a person’s self-concept

BELIEF CHANGE- FREQUENT CUES

• Product
– price
– product design
– country-of-origin
• France
 • Germany

• Message
– # of arguments
– repetition

• Source
– attractiveness
– expertise
– status
– number of sources

Belief change- eliminating the ‘problem’

Belief change- arguments
Capitalize on Relative Advantage
Influence competitor rating:
- Indirect comparative advertising
- Direct comparative advertising

2.2 CHANGING EVALUATION OF ATTRIBUTES VIA COMMUNICATION

EVALUATION
Evaluation-based attitude change
-Information
• More info on how important a product/attribute is
-Scarcity
• Products become more attractive if they are less available

Change perception- change perception of the ‘problem’

Turn negative into positive
Change importance of an attribute
Adding- add positive association to the ‘problem’
3. MODELS OF ATTITUDE IN MC

HOW TO ASSES ATTITUDES?

• Simple: How do you feel about…?
• Multiple-item scales:

ATTITUDE TOWARDS OBJECT VS ATTITUDES TOWARDS BEHAVIOR

USING ATTITUDES TO PREDICT BEHAVIOR

• In many cases, knowledge of a person’s product attitude is not a very good

predictor of behavior
• Questionable link between attitude and behavior
– Consumers may love a product or commercial, but not always buy the
product
• The Extended Fishbein Model
– Called the Theory of Reasoned Action
– Contains several important additions to the original, which improve its
ability to predict behavior

THEORY OF REASONED ACTION (TRA)

• Intentions Versus Behavior
• Attitude Toward Buying:
– Attitude toward the act of buying (Aact):
• How someone feels about buying a product that has certain
consequences
• Social Pressure:
– Subjective Norm (SN)
• Normative Belief (NB): Belief that others believe an action should
or should not be taken
• Motivation to Comply (MC): Degree to which consumers take into
account anticipated reactions
Theory of Planned Behavior – Example

THE ELABORATION LIKELIHOOD MODEL (ELM)

LEVEL OF INVOLVEMENT

High Involvement
“Think before you act” left brain
Low Involvement
“Act before you think” right brain
4. CONTECT EFFECTS

Consumer’s choice is influenced by the composition of the choice set.

Real product positions (in terms of attributes) unchanged,
BUT
Perceived positions change.
• Main context effects:
1. Substitution effect (Tversky 1972, Huber & Puto 1983)
2. Attraction effect (Huber et al. 1982; Huber & Puto 1983)
3. Compromise effect (Simonson 1989)
4. Range effect (Parducci 1965)
5. Categorization effect (Pan and Lehmann 1993)
6. Frequency effect (Pan and Lehmann 1993)

CONSEQUENCES OF CONTEXT EFFECTS

• Violate two assumptions implied by Value Maximization framework (Tversky
and Simonson 1993)
– Independence of Irrelevant Alternatives (IIA)
– Regularity principle
• IIA assumption:
Preference between any two options is independent of the presence of other options
• Regularity principle:
Adding an option to a choice set cannot increase the choice share of any of the items
already present

1.SUBSTITUTION EFFECT
• Adding an item to a choice set will hurt similar items disproportionally more
than dissimilar items (Tversky 1972)

Example: when buying a laptop you are indifferent between buying these two
Marketing implication of substitution effect:
Brands should be willing to cannibalize their own products to succeed on the market
place.
2. ATTRACTION EFFECT
• New item can increase the favourable perceptions of similar, but superior,
items (Huber et al. 1982)
• Asymmetric Dominance (aka. Decoy) effect
– People are attracted to products that are clearly better than some other
option in their choice set (a “decoy”) regardless of other options.

Example: for a big dinner you are indifferent between these two restaurants
Marketing implication:
• The key function of the decoy is not only to make your product look good, but
to draw attention to it.
• Add asymmetrically dominated item to enhance demand for focal item
• Easy and normally cheap to implement- just :
- strip out a feature,
- raise the price,
- or otherwise make it slightly less attractive,
=> and you have a decoy!

3. COMPRISE EFFECT
Items gain market share when they become the compromise or middle option in the
choice set

Example:

Marketing implication:
Add extreme item that enhances demand for focal item

4. RANGE EFFECT
• Range - difference in attribute values between the two extreme options
• Range effect - the perceived difference between two stimulus values is smaller
when they are evaluated in the context of a wide than a narrow range (Parducci
1965)
Example:

Marketing implication: Add item that stretches range, which enhances similarity
between focal item and a competitor.

5. CATEGORIZATION EFFECT
• Categorization effect: if a new brand is positioned close to an existing brand,
the existing brand should be perceived as more similar to the new entrant and
less similar to other existing brands in the set (Pan and Lehmann 1993)

Example:

Marketing implication:
Add item different category, which enhances similarity between focal item and a
competitor

6.FREQUENCY EFFECT
• The difference between two stimuli on a perceptual dimension increases when
the frequency (i.e., the number of
stimuli between that pair on that
dimension) increases.