Attitude

DEFINITION OF ATTITUDE

Cognitively oriented social psychologists defined an attitude as "an enduring organization of motivational, emotional, perceptual, and cognitive processes with respect to some aspect of an individual's world." In simple terms an attitude is the way we think, feel and act toward some aspect of our environment such as a retail store, television program, or product.

In Consumer Behavior contest, “an attitude is a learned predisposition to behave in a consistently favorable or unfavorable way with respect to a given object.”

Louis L. Thurstone defines attitude is - “the sum total of a man‟s inclinations and feelings, prejudice, or bias, preconceived notions, ideas, fears, threats and convictions about a specific topic”.

Katz D. defines – “attitude is the predisposition of the individual to evaluate some symbol or aspect of his work in a favorable or unfavorable manner.”

Krech D. R. S. Crutchfield and E.L. Ballachey define – “an endouring system of positive or negative evaluation, emotional feelings, and pro and con action tendencies with respect to a social object”.

 Robyn M. Dawes defines – “attitude is the response of an individual to a social object or phenomenon, and the response will have affective or evaluations connotations”

Properties of Attitudes:

Attitudes can vary along a number of dimensions or properties. They are:

(i) Favourability:

A person may like Coke or Pepsi and dislike others like Fanta, Mirinda, Canada Dry etc.

(ii) Intensity:

This means, the strength of liking or disliking. For example, consumer may be liking two brands at a time but he/she may be more positive towards one.

(iii) Confidence:

This means, attitude is the confidence with which they are held. Intercity and confidence differ slightly. For example, a person may be equally confident that he/she really likes Pepsi but may be slightly favourable toward Coke.

It is important for a marketer to study the degree of confidence associated with an attitude because:

(a) It can affect the strength of the relationship between attitudes and behaviour.

(b) It can affect an attitudes susceptibility to change. That means, more strongly held attitude is more resistant to change.

(iv) Stability:

Some attitudes are stable over an extended period of time, others will change. This dynamic nature of attitudes is largely responsible for the changes in consumer’s lifestyles. For exam­ple, people attitude towards fashion is changing. Also they are changing in health attitudes this means, it is a great news for fitness clubs, sporting equipment and clothing companies.

How Attitude is developed?

To understand the role of attitudes in consumer behaviour, we must understand how they develop and what are the functions they perform. The attitudes that consumers hold are, a result of their prior experiences. Attitudes develop over time through a learning process and are affected and also formed by family influences, peer group influences, personality, experience and information (from environment). Environmental factors have a strong influence on attitudes formation by shaping the type, amount, and quality of information and experience available to consumers.

Family Influences:

Family is an important influence on purchase decisions. Bennet and Kassarjian say, “Attitudes toward personal hygiene, preferences for food items etc. are acquired from parents.”

Peer Group Influences:

Researchers say that peer groups are much more likely than advertising to influence attitudes and purchasing behaviour.

Personality:

Personality also affects consumer’s attitudes. Traits such as aggression, extrover­sion, submissiveness or authoritarianism may influence attitudes toward brands and products.

Information and experience:

According to learning theory, consumer’s past experiences influ­ence their brand attitude and condition their future behaviour. It is seen that band loyalty will quickly end if the brand does not perform well. Therefore, information and experience also determines attitude.

Functions of Attitude:

Daniel Katz has proposed four functions of attitudes that explains how they serve the individu­als.

(a) Utilitarian Function:

This helps the consumers in achieving desired benefits. For example, in small car segments, marketers usually reflects the utilitarian function of attitudes in the ad. likeby featuring performance characteristics, mileage etc. Similarly, in the ad. of toothbrushes, they reflect utility of cleaning the teeth and giving them whiter look etc.

(b) Value – Expressive Function:

Attitudes can express consumers self – images and value systems. This specially holds true for high involvement products that is, costly products. Advertisers usually try to appeal to the value – expressive nature of attitudes by implying that use or purchase of a certain item will lead to self-enhancement. In this way, they appeal to large segment who value these self expressive traits.

The self – image of an individual purchasing a motorbike, for example, may be of strong, domineering and hard – driving person who likes to gain the upper hand. Like for Kinetic Honda & Kawasaki Bajaj two different types of self images are attached. In the former, the person with strong built up will be best suited and in the later, the person with not so good physique.

Another example can be Revlon Cologne ad. that suggests user is a confident, self-award, warm individual.

(c) Ego – Defensive Function:

Attitudes protect the ego from anxieties and threats. Consumers purchase many products, like mouthwashes to avoid bad breath or dandruff shampoo etc. these are basically anxiety – producing situations. This means consumers develop positive attitudes towards brands associated with social acceptance, confidence etc. For example. Head & Shoulders avoid embarrassment of flaking from dry scalp.

(d) Knowledge Function:

Consumers are exposed to the environment full of information. Consumers sort all of the messages, ignoring the less – relevant information. They have confusion and uncertainty while purchasing any product (Specially high involvement) but this function reduces all the uncertainties. Advertisements provide the valuable information about new brands or new charac­teristics of existing brands.

From the above functions, we have learnt that they affect the individual’s overall evaluation of an object. For example, two individuals having equally favourable attitudes toward mouthwash will vary in the nature of these attitudes. This will depend on whether they purchase because of utilitarian function (i.e. for freshness) or an ego – defensive function (i,e., to avoid bad breath). So both the individuals should be approached in the similar manner.