Consumer Behavior

MBA MM 3201

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 Individual Determinants of
Consumer behavior

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 Consumer Attitudes

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 Consumer Attitudes

Learning objectives:

• Defining attitude.
• Structural models of attitude.
• Tricomponent attitude model.
• The Fishbein Multiattribute attitude model.
• The Ideal point Multiattribute model.
• Attitude change implications.

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 Consumer Attitudes

Attitude:

• An attitude is the learned predisposition to behave in a consistently

favorable or unfavorable way with respect to a given object.

• The above definition includes following parts:

 The attitude is towards an “object”. In the marketing context it can

be interpreted to include product, brand, service, product use,
advertisement, price, medium or retailer etc.

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 Consumer Attitudes

 Attitudes are a learned predisposition, Attitudes are learnt as a

result of past experiences. As learned predisposition, attitudes
have motivational quality.

 Attitudes have consistency- consistent with the behavior they

reflect. Attitudes are not necessarily permanent, they do change.

 Attitudes occur within a situation which refers to events or

circumstances that influence the relationship between an attitude
and behavior.

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 Consumer Attitudes

• Having a favorable attitude towards a product is not the same thing

as having a favorable attitude towards buying or consuming a
product.

• This gives rise to two types of attitudes: Attitude towards the object
(Ao) and attitude towards the behavior (Ab).

• Ao represents an evaluation of the attitude object such as a product

or service.

• Ab represents an evaluation of performing a particular behavior

involving the attitude object such as buying the product.

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 Consumer Attitudes

Structural models of Attitudes

• These are:

1. Tricomponent attitude model,

2. The Fishbein Multiattribute attitude model and

3. The Ideal point Multiattribute model.

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 Consumer Attitudes

Tricomponent attitude model:

• According to this model, attitudes consist of three major

components:

1. A cognitive component,

2. An affective component and

3. A conative component.

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 Consumer Attitudes

Tricomponent attitude model

Conation

Affect

Cognition

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 Consumer Attitudes

• The first component consists of cognitions i.e. the knowledge and

perceptions acquired by a combination of direct experience with the
object and related information from other sources.

• A consumer’s emotions or feelings about a particular product

constitute the affective component. These emotions are considered
as evaluative. Product rated as favorable or unfavorable etc.

• The third component is concerned with the likelihood or tendency

that an individual will undertake a specific action or behave in a
particular way with regard to the attitude object.

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 Consumer Attitudes

The Fishbein Multiattribute attitude model:

• It can be represented symbolically as follows:

n

Ao =  biei
i=1

Where Ao = Attitude toward the object

bi = The strength of the belief that the object has attribute i
ei = The evaluation of attribute i
n = The number of salient or important attributes

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 Consumer Attitudes

• Belief refers to subjective judgments about relationships between

two or more things.

• Beliefs about a product's attributes are important since they

determine the favorability of consumer’s attitude towards the
product.

• As per the model the attitude towards an object is based on the

summed set of beliefs about the object’s attributes weighted by the
evaluation of these attributes.

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 Consumer Attitudes

The Ideal point Multiattribute attitude model:

• It can be represented symbolically as follows:
n

Ap =  Wi l Ii – Xi l
i=1

Where Ap = Attitude toward the product

Wi = The importance of attribute i
Ii = The ideal performance on attribute i
Xi = The belief about the product's actual performance on
attribute i
n = The number of salient or important attributes

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 Consumer Attitudes

• Whereas Fishbein model was developed to understand all kinds of

different attitudes, the ideal point model was designed specifically for
understanding consumer attitudes towards products.

• Under the model, consumers indicate where they believe a product

is located on scales representing the various degrees of salient
attributes.

• Consumers also report where the ‘ideal’ product will fall on these
attribute scales. The closer a product’s actual rating to the ideal
rating, the more favorable the attitude.

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 Consumer Attitudes

Attitude change implications

from Multiattribute attitude models

• There are three basic ways for changing consumer attitudes:

1. Changing beliefs,

2. Changing attribute importance and

3. Changing ideal points.

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 Consumer Attitudes

• Need to modify the product offering to change the consumers’

beliefs will depend on the accuracy of these beliefs.

• When consumers hold undesirable beliefs due to misconceived

offering, efforts should be made to bring these beliefs in line with
reality.

• If the consumers are correct in their perception, it may be necessary

to change the product itself.

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 Consumer Attitudes

• Attitudes can be changed by changing the importance the

consumers attach to various attributes.

• Marketer may attempt to increase or decrease importance of an

attribute.

• Increasing attribute importance is desirable when the competitor’s

brand is farther from the ideal point than firm’s offering.

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 Consumer Attitudes

• Another variant of changing attribute importance involves efforts to

add a new attribute.

• Changing an attributes’ importance is more difficult to achieve than

changing beliefs.

• Another option of changing attitudes involves altering consumers’

preferences what an ideal product should be.

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 Consumer Attitudes

Recap:

• Defining attitudes.
• Structural models of attitude.
• Tricomponent attitude model.
• The Fishbein Multiattribute attitude model.
• The Ideal point Multiattribute model.
• Attitude change implications

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