Chapter 6

Attitudes and
Intentions

McGraw-Hill/Irwin Copyright © 2010 by the McGraw-Hill Companies, Inc. All rights reserved.
What Is an Attitude?

Attitude is a person’s overall evaluation of a

concept.
Evaluations are affective responses created by:
Affective systems
Cognitive systems
Overall evaluation is formed when consumers
integrate knowledge, meanings, or beliefs about
the attitude concept (integration process).
Analyzes the personal relevance of the concept and
determines whether it is favorable or unfavorable.
Evaluations may be stored in memory.
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What is an Attitude? cont.

Whether an attitude will affect interpretation or

integration processes depends on its:
Accessibility in memory (or probability of
activation), influenced by:
Salience or importance.
Frequency of prior activation.
Strength of the association between a concept and its
attitude.
Attitudes can be measured by asking consumers
to evaluate the concept of interest.
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Attitudes Toward What?

Various physical and social objects

Intangible objects
Behaviors or actions

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Levels of Attitude Concepts

 Concepts vary in their levels of specificity:

 Product class
 Product form
 Brand
 Model
 Brand/model general situation
 Brand/model specific situation
 Marketers must measure the attitude concept at the level
of specificity most relevant to the marketing problem.

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Exhibit 6.1 - Levels of Specificity of an Attitude
Concept

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What is an Attitude? - Marketing Implications

Brand equity involves a strong, positive brand

attitude based on favorable meanings and beliefs
that are accessible in memory.
Creates a strong, favorable consumer-brand
relationship.
Can be built, borrowed, or bought.
Attitude tracking studies
Marketers can use measures of consumers’
attitudes to indicate the success of marketing
strategies.
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Attitudes Toward Objects

Salient beliefs
Activated beliefs.
Only salient beliefs about an object create a
person’s attitude toward that object.
Many factors influence which beliefs about an
object will be activated in a situation and thus
become salient determinants of Ao (attitude
toward objects).
Salient beliefs vary over time or situations for
some products.

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The Multiattribute Attitude Model

Multiattribute attitude models focus on

consumers’ beliefs about multiple product or
brand attributes.
Martin Fishbein’s model is most influential in
marketing.

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The Multiattribute Attitude Model (cont.)

Key proposition
Evaluations of salient beliefs cause overall
attitude.
Overall attitude is a function of two factors
Strengths of the salient beliefs associated with
the object.
Evaluation of those beliefs.

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The Multiattribute Attitude Model (cont.)

AO = attitude toward the object

bi = strength of the belief that the object has
attribute i
ei = evaluation of attribute i
n = number of salient beliefs about the object
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The Multiattribute Attitude Model (cont.)

Model components
Belief strength is the perceived probability of
association between an object and its relative
attributes.
Affected by past consumer experiences.
Number of salient beliefs about an attitude object
unlikely to exceed seven to nine.
Belief evaluation reflects how favorably the
consumer perceives that attribute.
Not necessarily fixed over time or constant across
different situations
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Attitudes Toward Objects -
Marketing Implications

Understanding your customers.

Diagnosis of marketing strategies.
Understanding situational influences.

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Attitude-Change Strategies

Add a new salient belief about the attitude object.

Increase the strength of an existing positive
belief.
Improve the evaluation of a strongly held belief.
Make an existing favorable belief more salient.

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Attitudes Toward Behavior

Most research has found rather weak

relationships between attitudes toward an object
and specific single behaviors.
It is not possible to predict with accuracy any
specific behavior based on knowing a person’s
overall attitude toward the object of the behavior.

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Exhibit 6.6 - The Theory of Reasoned Action

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The Theory of Reasoned Action cont.

 Any reasonably complex voluntary behavior is

determined by the person’s intention to perform that
behavior.
 Assumes consumers:
Consciously consider the consequences of alternative behaviors.
Choose the one that leads to the most desirable consequences.
 Outcome is an intention to engage in the selected
behavior.
 The theory is not relevant for extremely simple or
involuntary behaviors.

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The Theory of Reasoned Action cont.

Model components
Behaviors are specific actions directed at some
target object.
Behavioral intention is a proposition
connecting self and a future action.
Attitude toward the behavior or action reflects
the consumer’s overall evaluation of performing
the behavior.
The subjective or social norm component
reflects consumers’ perceptions of what other
people want them to do.
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Attitudes Toward Behavior -
Marketing Implications

Situational context has powerful influences on

consumers’ behavioral intentions.
To develop effective strategies
Determine whether the attitude toward the
behavior or action or the subjective norm
component has the major influence on
behavioral intentions.
Measures of consumers’ intentions may not be
perfect indicators of the actual intentions that
determine the behavior.
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Intentions and Behaviors

To accurately predict behaviors, marketers should

measure consumers’ intentions at the same level
of abstraction and specificity as the action, target,
and time components of the behavior.
Situation context also should be specified when it
is important.

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Intentions and Behaviors (cont.)

Factors that reduce or weaken the relationship

between measured behavioral intentions and
observed behavior:
Intervening time
Different levels of specificity
Unforeseen environmental event
Unforeseen situational context
Degree of voluntary control
Stability of intentions
New information
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Intentions and Behaviors (cont.)

Despite less-than-perfect accuracy, measures of

purchase intentions are often the best way to
predict future purchase behaviors.
Certain behaviors just cannot be accurately
predicted from beliefs, attitudes, and intentions.

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Summary

Attitude is a consumers’ overall evaluation of an

object.
Attitude objects vary in levels of abstraction and
specificity.
Discussed consumers’ attitudes toward objects
and described Fishbein’s multiattribute model.

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Summary (cont.)

The theory of reasoned action identifies

consumers’ attitudes toward performing
behaviors and social influences as the basis for
behavioral intentions.
The problems of using measures of behavioral
intentions to predict actual behaviors were
discussed.

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Summary (cont.)

Consumers’ activated knowledge is the basic

factor underlying their attitudes, subjective
norms, and intentions, and ultimately their
behaviors.
Activated salient beliefs and the resulting
attitudes and intentions are sensitive to situational
factors in the environment, including marketing
strategies.

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