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There are three different views on attitude in academic circles. The first view is that attitude is mainly the expression of emotions, or it reflects people's views on likes and dislikes. Thurston and Raizman's definitions of attitude reflect this view. The second view is that attitude is the unity of emotion and cognition. American scholar M.Rosenburg wrote: "The emotional response to the attitude object is based on the belief or knowledge of the evaluation object, so the attitude has both emotional and cognitive components." The third view holds that attitude is the synthesis of emotion, cognition and behavior. Kreiger and Friedman's above definitions of attitude reflect this view.

abstract

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1) The meaning of consumer attitude

Consumer's attitude refers to the emotional response of consumers to objects, attributes and interests, that is, consumers have a consistent tendency to like or dislike a commodity, brand or company after learning.

People have an attitude towards almost everything. This attitude is not innate, but acquired. For example, we may form a good impression on someone because of his/her charming appearance, or because of his/her decent manners, profound knowledge and noble personality. Whatever the reason, this kind of affection is gradually formed through contact, observation and understanding, not innate. Once attitude is formed, it has the characteristics of relative persistence and stability, and gradually becomes a part of personality, which makes individuals show certain rules and habits in the reaction mode. At this point, attitudes and emotions are very different. The latter is often situational, and with the disappearance of a certain situation, emotions will weaken or disappear. It is precisely because of the persistence, stability and consistency of attitude that it is difficult to change. Although Copernicus' Heliocentrism is a scientific truth, it was first put forward for a long time, which attracted biased and angry condemnation. The recognition of this truth comes at the cost of many people being imprisoned or even giving their lives. This shows how difficult it is for people to change their original feelings, positions and concepts in their attitudes towards science and religion.

2) the role of consumer attitude

Consumers form certain attitudes towards products, services or enterprises and store them in memory. When necessary, they will extract them from their memory to deal with or help solve the current purchase problem. In this way, attitude helps consumers to adapt to the dynamic buying environment more effectively, so that they don't have to explain and respond to every new thing or product or new marketing means in a new way. In this sense, forming an attitude can meet or help to meet a certain consumption demand, or the attitude itself has certain functions. Although many theories about attitude function have been developed in academic circles, D.Katz's four-function theory has attracted wide attention.

(1) regulation function, also called utility or utility function. It means that attitude can make people better adapt to the environment and seek advantages and avoid disadvantages. People are social animals, and others and social groups play an important role in people's survival and development. Only by forming an appropriate attitude can we get recognition, get rewards and get along with some important people or groups.

(2) Self-defense function. It refers to the formation of attitude towards certain things, which can help individuals avoid or forget those harsh environments or hard-to-face realities, thus protecting their existing personality and maintaining their mental health.

(3) knowledge or knowledge function. It refers to forming an attitude, which is more conducive to the understanding and understanding of things. In fact, attitude can be used as a standard or reference to help people understand the world and help people give some meaning to the changeable external world.

(4) Value expression function. Refers to forming an attitude and being able to express one's core values to others. In the late 1970s and early 1980s, when the door to the outside world was just opened, some young people wore plaid shirts and bell bottoms as fashion, while many middle-aged and elderly people complained about this kind of clothing, which actually reflected the different values of the two generations in accepting foreign cultures.

3) Consumers' attitudes and beliefs

Consumer belief refers to the knowledge that consumers have about the attributes and interests of things. Different consumers may have different beliefs about the same thing, and this belief will affect consumers' attitudes. Some consumers may think that the quality of brand-name products is much higher than that of ordinary products and can provide great additional benefits; Other consumers insist that with the maturity of products, the quality of products produced by different enterprises is not much different, and the additional benefits provided by brand-name products are not as great as people think. Obviously, the above different beliefs will lead to different attitudes towards brand-name products.

Form a transformation

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As consumers, each of us has many different attitudes towards products, services, advertisements, direct mail advertisements, the Internet and retail stores. Whenever we are asked whether we like or dislike a product, service, retailer, direct and indirect seller or advertiser, we are asked to express our attitude.

1) consistent attitude.

Another attribute of attitude is that it is relatively consistent with the reflected behavior. However, although their consistency and attitudes are not permanent, they are indeed changing.

2) Attitude is a tendency of acquisition.

It is generally believed that attitudes are learned through experience. That is to say, the attitude related to buying behavior is formed as the result of a direct experience, which includes products, oral information obtained from others, the influence of mass media advertisements, the Internet and various direct marketing situations. One thing we should pay attention to is that although attitude may be the result of behavior, it is not the same as behavior. It reflects a kind of like or dislike evaluation of the attitude object. Attitude, as a tendency to learn through learning or experience, is motivated, that is, it can drive consumers to form a special behavior and at the same time make consumers resist a certain behavior.

Consumer belief

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In the process of purchase or consumption, beliefs generally involve three links, forming three types of beliefs. These three beliefs are: object-attribute belief; Attribute-benefit belief; Goal-benefit belief.

Object-attribute belief.

The object can be people, products, companies or other things. Attribute refers to the characteristics and characteristics that an object has or does not have. Consumers' understanding of goods with certain attributes is called goods attribute belief. For example, the engine is driven by a steam turbine, and aspirin can inhibit thrombosis, which is a belief that the product has certain properties. In a word, object-attribute belief makes consumers associate an attribute with someone, something or something.

Attribute-benefit belief.

Consumers buy products and services to solve certain problems or meet certain needs. Therefore, the product attributes pursued by consumers can provide benefits. Attribute-benefit belief is actually consumers' understanding or cognition of what kind of consequences a certain attribute can bring and what kind of specific benefits it provides. For example, aspirin has the characteristics of preventing thrombosis, which helps to reduce the risk of heart attack, thus enabling consumers to establish a connection between the two.

Goal-benefit belief.

Goal-benefit belief refers to consumers' understanding that products or services will lead to specific benefits. In the example of aspirin mentioned above, the belief of object benefit refers to the cognition of the connection between aspirin use and reducing the risk of heart disease. By analyzing the needs of consumers and the benefits of products that meet these needs, it is helpful for enterprises to formulate appropriate product strategies and promotion strategies.

Attitude and behavior

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Generally speaking, the influence of consumer attitude on purchasing behavior is mainly reflected in the following three aspects:

First of all, the attitude of consumers will affect their judgment and evaluation of products and trademarks. Secondly, attitude affects consumers' learning interest and learning effect. Finally, attitude affects consumers' purchase intention, which in turn affects their purchase behavior. M.Fishbein and I.Ajzen believe that whether a consumer takes a specific action on an object cannot be predicted according to his attitude towards the object, because the specific action is determined by the intention of the person who takes the action. To predict consumer behavior, we must understand consumers' intentions, and consumers' attitude is only one of the factors that determine their intentions.

The influence of intermediate factors

Consumers' attitude generally affects consumers' buying behavior through the intermediate variable of buying intention, and in many cases, attitudes and behaviors are inconsistent. In addition to the subjective norms and accidents mentioned above, there are many other factors that lead to inconsistency. The following is a brief discussion of these factors.

Motivation to buy: Even if consumers have a positive attitude and goodwill towards a certain enterprise or a certain product, if they lack the motivation to buy, consumers may not necessarily take the purchase action. For example, some consumers may have a good impression on the computers produced by IBM and think that the IBM computers are of high quality, but these consumers may not realize the necessity of owning an IBM computer, which leads to inconsistent attitudes and behaviors.

Purchasing power: consumers may especially admire a certain product, but due to the limitation of economic ability, they can only choose products of the same kind and other brands with lower prices. Many consumers think highly of Mercedes-Benz cars, but when making a real purchase decision, they may choose other brands of cars, because the high quality of Mercedes-Benz also means that consumers have to pay higher prices.

Situational factors, such as holidays, lack of time, illness, etc. , may lead to inconsistent buying attitude and buying behavior. When time is abundant, consumers can choose a brand of products according to their own preferences and attitudes; However, when time is very tight, such as catching a plane and leaving a city soon, there is no necessary internal relationship between the product actually chosen by the consumer and his attitude towards the product.

Time lag: Generally speaking, the longer the interval between the measurement of attitude and the behavior to be predicted, the weaker the correlation between them. Because the longer the time lag, the more likely it is that consumers' attitudes and preferences will change, or other unexpected situations will occur. Moreover, only when the attitude object appears in front of consumers, or thinks that other ways activate the attitude in memory, will the attitude work.

Social pressure: Other people's attitudes and reactions will also affect consumers' behavior. And in different social and cultural backgrounds, consumers face different social pressures.

Technical problems in attitude measurement and prediction

Improper attitude measurement method: the inconsistency between behavior and attitude may sometimes be due to errors in attitude measurement. For example, only the attitude of consumers towards a product is measured, but not the attitude of consumers towards other similar competitors; Only measure the attitude of one family member, not the attitude of other family members; Or measure it without specific circumstances, without measuring other aspects involved in attitude, and so on.

Attitude does not correspond to the behavior to be predicted: Attitude measures often do not correspond to the behavior they should predict. A concrete problem has a new meaning after abstraction. For example, knowing a person's attitude towards sports is not enough to predict his purchase intention of Nissan 300ZX. Therefore, when predicting behavior according to attitude, we need to pay attention to the degree of correlation between this attitude and specific behavior and its motivation.

Attitude may be manifested in different behaviors: consumers' positive attitude towards a product or brand may be manifested in different behaviors, so it is difficult to predict specific behaviors (often buying behaviors) with an attitude. Suppose there are three consumers who don't have a Mercedes-Benz, but they have a positive attitude towards it. Their behaviors may be quite different: one consumer has seen many advertisements and reports about Mercedes-Benz, another consumer has gone to the exhibition hall to see the latest Mercedes-Benz, and the third consumer may just fantasize about owning a Mercedes-Benz. It can be seen that buying behavior is only a manifestation of attitude.

The subject of attitude is inconsistent with the subject of behavior to be predicted: some buying behaviors may not come from the will of consumers, that is, they may be an unconscious behavior. For example, a junior high school student may have a positive attitude towards Lenovo computers, but his father may have some negative attitudes towards this brand of computers, but it is his father who really plays a decisive role in the purchase process. In this case, if the attitude of junior high school students towards Lenovo computers is used to predict the purchase behavior, the gap between the conclusion and the actual result can be imagined.

structural model

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There are two views on the composition of attitude: one is monism, which holds that attitude is composed of emotional components, that is, attitude is only understood as a kind of emotion or emotion; The other is the ternary theory, which holds that attitude is determined by cognition. Emotion and intention are three elements.

The view of monism separates cognitive elements and intentional elements from the concept of attitude, and regards cognitive elements as beliefs and intentional elements as behavioral intentions, so attitude is composed of emotional elements. In other words, emotion is the essential aspect of attitude, while cognition and intention play an auxiliary role. Here, the concept of emotion refers to the degree to which consumers like or dislike the object. Emotion is divided into utility perception (evaluation) formed in the evaluation of cognitive elements and hedonic perception formed in the unique feeling of the object. Attitude is the sum of the evaluation and feelings of the object.

Evaluation is related to utilitarian motivation, and emotion is related to hedonic motivation. Consumers can form attitudes based on evaluations or emotional reactions.

Ternary theory assumes that consumers are rational decision-makers, and thinks that consumers will always take action after full consideration. From the point of view of ternary theory, attitude is a compound concept of belief, emotion and behavior tendency about a specific object. Therefore, according to the ternary theory, attitude consists of cognitive elements, emotional elements and intentional elements.

(1) cognitive component

Cognitive elements include the explanation of the attitude object and the knowledge, belief and significance resulting from it. For consumers, it is particularly important to know the product attributes, use results and values. Therefore, if consumers want to have an attitude towards a product or service, they must obtain the minimum information.

(2) Influencing factors

Emotional elements refer to consumers' emotional experience of attitude objects. It is manifested as consumers' emotional reaction to the quality, brand and reputation of goods, such as like or dislike, appreciation or disgust. On the one hand, this emotional experience depends on consumers' cognitive evaluation, on the other hand, it also depends on consumers' direct experience of products or services. Emotion plays a special role in the formation of consumer attitudes. Under the condition of fixed attitude, emotion determines the persistence and intensity of consumers' attitude, which is accompanied by the whole process of consumers' buying activities.

(3) conation components

Intention refers to the tendency of consumers to take action against attitude objects. In consumer research, intention factors usually refer to consumers' purchase intention. The most important factors affecting it include the correlation between attitude object and personal purpose, self-worth and other overall attitudes.

Generally speaking, the three elements of attitude need to be coordinated. The formation of attitude is a process in which consumers get enough information, have a good impression on the object and strongly feel the need to take action. However, there may be inconsistencies among the three elements, and when this happens, emotional elements (especially emotions and emotions) play a leading role.

Generally speaking, emotion is the core of attitude. This is consistent with monism and ternary theory, but these two views have different views on feelings. Ternary theory confuses emotion and evaluation, and holds that the consistency of cognition, emotion and intention is the premise, while monism distinguishes emotion from evaluation.