Strategies of attitude change

• Changing the consumers’ basic motivation function

This technique makes particular needs prominent. One method for changing a consumer’s motivation is known as the functional approach this approach states that the consumer’s attitudes can be classified in four functions, two focused on here are The utilitarian function and the ego-defensive function (Schiffman, 2014).

The utilitarian function: When a product has been useful or helped someone in the past, their attitude towards the product or service is usually favourable. By showing someone your product has a utilitarian purpose that they may not have considered. For example, Toyota highlighting their Prius C hybrid is the best on fuel efficiency (Noronha, 2017).

ego-defensive function:  This technique is relying on people to want to protect their self-images from inner feelings of doubt. By acknowledging this need, ads for things such as medicines, cosmetics and fashion clothing can change a person’s attitude by offering reassurance to the consumer’s self- image (Noronha,2017).

Two other functions are the value-expressive function and the Knowledge function

 

• Associating the product with an admired group or event

It is possible to alter consumer’s perspective about your brand or service by highlighting a relationship with particular social groups, events or causes, personally, an example that comes to my mind is McDonalds ‘Ronald McDonalds house’, which helps seriously ill children and their families in a time of struggle. By situating themselves with a sincere charity that is actually making a difference can help ultimately change the perspective of the company from a negative to a positive one.

 

• Resolving two conflicting attitudes

Attitude change strategies can sometimes resolve the actual or potential conflict between two attitudes. Specifically, if consumers can be made to see that their negative attitude toward a product, a specific brand, or its attributes is really not in conflict with another attitude, they may be induced to change their evaluation of the brand from a negative too positive.

Altering components of the multi-attribute model

These models provide marketers with additional insights in how to go about changing attitude by:

• changing the relative evaluation of attributes- opportunity to persuade consumers to ‘cross over’ that is to persuade consumers who prefer one version of the product to shift their favorable attitude towards another version of the product (Schiffman, 2014).
• Changing brand beliefs- This suggests that a change in attitude needs to be compelling and repeated enough to overcome the natural resistance to letting go of established attitudes (Schiffman, 2014).
• Adding an attribute– Adding an attribute that reflects an actual product change or technological innovation, is easier to accomplish than stressing a previously ignored attribute (Schiffman, 2014). For example, a sports drink stating they have more health benefits than fruit.
• Changing the overall brand rating: Another strategy consists of attempting to alter consumer’s overall assessment of the brand directly, without attempting to improve or change their evaluation of any single brand attribute (Noronha, 2017). Such a strategy frequently relies on some form of a global statement that “this is the largest selling brand” or “the one all others try to initiate” or a similar claim that sets the brand apart from all its competitors (Schiffman, 2014).

 

Changing consumer beliefs about competitors’ brands

Put very simple this strategy involves changing the consumer’s perspectives on competitive brands, for example below is a video by Microsoft highlighting all the better features the surface pro has compared to the apple air. This can be a very effective technique however marketers should be careful as comparative advertising can boomerang by giving visibility to a competitor’s claims.

 

• The elaboration likelihood model (ELM)

specifies when people are more likely to be influenced by the content of persuasive communication instead of superficial characteristics, and vice versa. The model describes two routes to persuasion – central and peripheral – that can be successful in changing someone’s attitude under the right circumstances (Mackenzie, 1992). The central route to persuasion is when people elaborate on a persuasive argument, listening carefully and thinking about the logic behind the message. The peripheral route to persuasion is when people do not elaborate on a persuasive argument and instead are swayed by surface characteristics that are peripheral to the message (Mackenzie, 1992).

 

 

 

 

References:

Dhar, Ravi, and Klaus Wertenbroch. 2000. “Consumer Choice Between Hedonic And Utilitarian Goods”. Journal of Marketing Research vol.37 pp60-71.

Mackenzie, Scott B., and Richard A. Spreng. 1992. “How Does Motivation Moderate The Impact Of Central And Peripheral Processing On Brand Attitudes And Intentions?”. Journal of Consumer Research. Vol.18.

Noronha, Suraj Francis. Strategies of Attitude change. N.p., 2017. Web. 5 May 2017.

Schiffman, L; O’Cass, A; Paladino, A and Carlson, J 2014, Consumer Behaviour, 6th edition, ISBN 9781442561533.

Consumerism (protecting the consumer )

Consumerism is the protection or promotion of the interests of the common group of buyers. Some of the main problems that today’s consumers face is; advertising to the child consumer and cigarette and alcohol advertising. However, there are strategies in place to combat these challenges and keep the everyday consumer safe and protected, such as consumer legislation and consumer education (Budnitz, 2010).

Advertising to the child consumer

Advertising to the child consumer is a very big issue, the biggest offender being the so called ‘junk food’ industry where the nutritional messages these companies are advertising is usually the opposite of a balanced diet. A study conducted by the Department of Nutrition and Social Health found that as many of 93% of advertisements during the time slot of 4-5pm where food advertisements and a majority of them being ‘junk food’ (Orciari, 2007). A strong example is McDonalds marketers, they constantly work to create emotional attachment between the kids and their brand. This is done through the use of characters, such as Ronald McDonald and others from popular movies/T.V. shows. By having tie-ins relating to popular movies or TV shows the fast food industry creates a connection between the feelings that children have for the toys with a brand (Orciari,2007). And this creates huge problems for parents trying to with stand the pressures form their children generated by the television advertising. Some approaches used to deal with this problem are; within the education sector there is a large focus on teaching children nutritional lessons as well as advertisements being maintained as regulatory system by the government, through the Australian Communications and Media Authority Children’s Television Standards 2009 (Schiffman 2014).

 

Cigarette and alcohol advertising

During the late 60’s and early 70’s tobacco advertisement was at its peak often using attractive or influential people in their advertisements depicting smoking as sexy and cool. By the mid 1990’s advertisement of cigarettes was banned from majority of main stream media, starting with television and radio then gradually extending to magazines, newspapers and sporting sponsorship (Schiffman, 2014). Eventually stores were no longer able to display the packaging of cigarettes to the customers as well as high governments sales taxes an anti-smoking campaigns were introduced to try and discourage cigarette use. Surprisingly

despite all the legislations that were put in place the rates of smoking by young Australians still remains high (Department of Health, 2015). Today the companies have products called ‘low tar’ cigarettes, with pin prick ventilation holes, on the packaging however if consumers are to accidently block the holes (which is very easy to do) it increases the tar levels back to a normal cigarette. Choice complained that the company’s labelling was non represented of the actually tar levels smokers were getting (Schiffman, 2014), showing that these companies are still finding ways to mislead consumers. Alcohol advertising also has regulations and guidelines that help keep companies in line. Some of these being that people over 25 should be that main characters in the advertisements and that alcohol should not be depicted as the source of success or happiness (Schiffman, 2014) research conducted on behalf of the public showed positive reactions to the advertisements with very few complaints.

In 2011, a legislation was amended and re introduced the ‘Competition and Consumer Act 2010’. This legislation is the most important piece of legislation in Australia for both consumers and marketers (Schiffman, 2014). This legislation includes:

• Anti-competitive practices
• Unconscionable conduct
• Consumer protection
• Product liability
• Product safety and product information
• Industry codes

e.g. of consumer legislation: Alleged price fixing in the Victorian bread market led to a $8.9 million fine. In addition to the legislation and regulations consumers also need information and education to enable them to make wise purchasing decisions. Today, many federal, state, territory and local agencies offer consumer education programs in order to distribute consumer information (Schiffman, 2014) allowing for a smarter set of consumers in the market and reducing the risk that consumers are constantly faced with in todays markets.

 

References:

Australian Government Department of Health, 2015.‘Tobacco advertising’.Australian Government Department of Health, Canberra.

http://www.health.gov.au/internet/main/publishing.nsf/Content/tobacco-advert

Budnitz, Mark Elliott, 2010. “The Development Of Consumer Protection Law, The Institutionalization Of Consumerism, And Future Prospects And Perils”. Georgia State University Law Review vol.26 No.4.

Orciari, Megan, 2007. “Fast Food Marketing To Children”. Worcester Polytechnic Institute, vol.1, pp1-4. https://web.wpi.edu/Pubs/E-project/Available/E-project-082107-231740/unrestricted/Appendix_1.pdf

Schiffman, L; O’Cass, A; Paladino, A and Carlson, J 2014, Consumer Behaviour, 6th edition, ISBN 9781442561533.