Nice Essay

Nowadays, these are some experts argue that attitudes and behaviour, which one comes first? This topic is very important for people who are studying in Marketing, because they can easy to target the market, when they understand it. This essay will discuss this debate critically with reference to the literature in this area of consumer behaviours. Furthermore, it will give which side of the debate I agree with and explain why.

Attitudes are defined as an overall evaluation. Attitudes can vary from person to person; two people when asked what their attitudes are will give two different answers. However attitude properties stay the same. These properties include valence, extremity, resistance, persistence, and confidence. Attitudes depend on two basic factors: beliefs and feelings. As such, understanding why consumers hold certain attitudes needs examining the underlying beliefs and feelings consumers have about the attitude object.

These are some major writers’ definition of the attitude. According to Sharp (cited in Franzen 1999)“Attitude stands for a general and lasting (consistent over time) positive, neutral or negative evaluation of a person, object, institution or event. The possibilities for changing attitudes are somewhat limited. Attitudes are relatively stable: they do change but very slowly.”East (1997) also gives a similar but slightly different definition to what an attitude is“What we feel about a concept, which may be a brand, category, person, an ideology or any other entity about which we can think and to which we can attach feeling. Attitudes are thus about the evaluation that we given to a specific concept; they are not like mood, which is a generalized state of being with no clear focus, and they are not thought structures with no feelings attached.”(East 1997),Marketers have often used attitude first theory from the work of several psychologists and writers (LaPiere, Ajzen & Fishbein) theories that used attitudinal research to predict behaviour.

One such was LaPiere who conducted research on hotel managers’ attitudes towards Chinese guests in 1934. He found that American hotel managers’ generally had an unfavourable opinion and response towards Chinese guests. His study involved a Chinese couple who asked for a room in an American hotel, and he concluded that American hotel managers had negative attitudes toward Chinese guests; therefore hotel managers’ behaviour was because of their attitude (LaPiere, 1934) In addition to LaPiere’s research, marketers use Ajzen and Fishbein’s theory of reasoned action, and Ajzen’s theory of planned behaviour to explain why attitude precedes behaviour.

According to Fishbein & Ajzen (1975) “the Theory of Reasoned Action” that intentions often predict behaviour quite accurately does not in itself provide much information about the reasons for the behaviour. It would improve our ability to predict behaviour. Intentions are a function of two basic determinants, one personal in nature and the other reflecting social influence. The theory applied itself to the prediction of intentions, as opposed to behaviour. The theory “incorporates evaluations and beliefs about the consequences of the behaviour and also subjective norm; the beliefs about others expectations and the motivation to comply with those expectations.” (Baker 1995)Later, Ajzen published the “Theory of Planned Behaviour” (Ajzen, 1991), which was an updated version of the Theory of Reasoned Action. This theory includes Attitude toward the behaviour, the subjective norm and perceived behavioural control. Fundamentally, perceived behavioural control is assessed by asking people how much control they have over performing a particular behaviour. This theory shows two important features. Firstly, the theory believes perceived behavioural control has motivational implications for intentions. People who believe that they have neither the resources nor the opportunities to perform certain behaviour are unlikely to form strong behavioural intentions to engage in it. Even if they hold favourable attitudes toward the behaviour and believe that important others would agree with their performing the behaviour. Secondly, it is the possibility of a direct link between perceived behavioural control and behaviour. In many examples, the performance of behaviour depends not only on motivation to do so but also on enough control over the behaviour in question. Thus perceived behavioural control can help predict goal attainment independent of behaviour intention to the extent that it reflects actual control with some degree of accuracy. In fact, perceived behavioural control can influence behaviour indirectly, via intentions, and it can also be used to predict behaviour directly, because it may be considered a partial substitute for a measure of actual control.

For both theories Theory of Reasoned Action and Theory of Planned Behaviour, they are generating the bias (projective) towards something. If customers have a bed attitude of the product, they will not to buy the product. However, in fact, some people they do not like some products, they still buy it. For example, people who dislike cheese may still buy it for cooking. People who like cheese may not buy it, because they are diets. (East 1997)For marketers the two theories show that consumers exercise certain attitudes, intentions and exercise some level of control which dictates what their behaviour will be. For example, your attitude towards the Body Shop is positive, and that you intend on buying some of the products in the near future, this implies you will control your attitude towards Body Shop and your behaviour will reflect this favourable attitude towards the Body Shop in that you will buy their products over other products which you might have a negative attitude towards.

Marketers also use Fazio’s Attitude Accessibility Theory to justify the attitude first theory.

Fazio’s Attitude Accessibility Theory (Fazio, Powell, & Williams 1989) was developed 1986 and in this theory it is according to Baker (1995) that“Strongly held attitudes are more likely to be accessible in memory. Once received from memory, this attitude guides the processing of further information about the attitude object; in other words, the process of selective perception.”LaPiere, Fishbein and Ajzen, and Fazio all confirm that attitudes precedes behaviour illustrating the need for marketers to measure consumer attitudes towards products as it necessary for them to know that in order to predict future buying behaviour.

However, this is not the end of the debate. To complicate matters another group of people believe that behaviour precedes attitude, and that it is necessary for marketers to measure this rather than attitudes when predicting future buying behaviour by consumers.

Behaviour is not as simple to define as attitude. But basically “Consumer behaviour is defined as the behaviour that consumers display is seeking, purchasing, using, evaluation and disposing of products and services that they expect will satisfy their personal needs.” (Schiffman et al. 2001). The main characteristics of behaviour are that it is enduring, habitual, and constant/unchanging over a long period time. That is what consumers have bought in the past, they will buy in the future. For example, if I have bought Nescafe Instant Coffee ™ many times in the past I will continue buying it in the future even though there are many other instant coffee brands.

Much like the attitude first section of the debate, behaviourists and marketers leaning to the behaviour first debate, point to Pavlov’s Classical Conditioning Theory and Festinger’s Theory of Cognitive Dissonance.

According to Sharp (2003) Pavlov describe one type of associative learning in which is no contingency between response and reinforce. Pavlov applied meat paste with a bell until the dogs’ salivated. Afterwards, when the bell was rung, the dogs would start to salivate. However, when the paste was removed and the bell was rung without the paste, the dogs still salivated, because the dogs were conditioned to get the meat paste with the bell. Therefore, it is called a conditioned response. The dogs learned to associate the bell ringing with food. “This experiment paired a stimulus that does not normally produce a response, which a stimulus that is known to product a response.” This is important to marketers because people associate their responses to certain stimuli (known as a cue) and marketers can use these cues to influence consumer buying behaviour. For example, Coca Cola is trying to associate itself with thirst, so when consumers are thirsty the remember Coca Cola and buy it. It is important for marketers to know that using repetitive advertising in mass-marketing communication channels for their products leads to consumers being conditioned to their products and influence their buying behaviour.

The second theory that behaviour before attitude advocates use is Festinger’s Theory of Cognitive Dissonance.

According to the Cognitive Dissonance theory (Festinger 1957) it deals with pairs of cognitions. Festinger says that”Any knowledge, opinion, or belief about the environment, about oneself, or about one’s behaviour…………..They may simply have nothing to do with one another. That is, under such circumstances where one cognitive element implies nothing at all concerning some other element, these two elements (cognitions) are irrelevant to one another”If two cognitions are in fact relevant to one another, then they are consonant or dissonant cognitions. Consonant cognitions come about when the knowledge follow from another and dissonant cognitions occur when the obverse of one element follows from the other. The existence of dissonant cognitions makes an uncomfortable feeling. This feeling will motivate the individual to decrease or to eliminate the dissonance. In addition Festinger (1957) states “The presence of dissonance gives rise to pressures to reduce or eliminate the dissonance. The strength of the pressures to reduce the dissonance is a function of the magnitude of the dissonance”. The number of dissonant beliefs, and the importance associated with every belief are two factors that affect the greatness of the dissonance. (Leckenby n.d)An example used by Festinger (1957) a habitual smoker who learns that smoking is bad for health will experience dissonance, because the knowledge that smoking is a bad behaviour for health, but he still continues to smoke. He can reduce the dissonance by changing his behaviour, and stop smoking, which would be consonant with the cognition that smoking is a bad behaviour for health. Alternatively, the smoker could reduce dissonance by changing his knowledge about the effect of smoking on health and believe that smoking does not have a bed result on health (eliminating the dissonant cognition). He might look for positive effects of smoking and believe that smoking reduces tension and keeps him from putting weight. (Adding consonant cognitions) Or he might believe that the risk to health from smoking is not serious. If compared with the danger of automobile accidents (Reducing the importance of the dissonance cognition). In addition, he might think the smoking is a very important part of his life (Increasing the importance of consonant cognitions).

According to Kotler et al (2001) “Behavioural segmentation divides buyer into groups based on their knowledge of the product, their attitude towards it, the way they use it and their responses to it.” Nowadays, many marketers believe that behaviour variables are the best starting point for building market segments. It is very important to use of behaviour in assessing the target market.

But, according to Skinner (1938, 1953) cited in East (1997) a behaviourist’s thought and feeling are effects but not causes. For example, like ripples on the surface of a pond, they show the movements of fish, but do not move the fish. It this case, we can use attitude information only as an indicator of behaviour, to predict by not to explain. Such narrow behaviourism is usually rejected today. One reason is that difficult to describe action without think of the thought and feeling that lie behind it. Words become insults or praise only through an understanding of the reasons of the person expresses them. The behaviourist position is not subtle enough to deal with this complexity of people behaviour. Opposed to behaviourism is the view that thought and feeling can create change in action directly. This is cognitivism, in its strongest form, experience is explained and used to change attitudes and knowledge, which will control behaviour. From a cognitive perspective, behaviour may be modified by communication, which changes attitudes and knowledge, and this process may help explain how some advertising and word-of –month communications affect consumer choices.

In contradiction to Skinner, a paper by Dall’ Olmo Riley, Ehrenberg, Castleberry, Barwise and Barnard in 1997 showed empirically that consumer buying behaviour was influenced by past buying behaviour.

As we have seen there are major writers have different opinions. Some of them believe that behaviour from measures of attitude. Some of them do not agree with it. However, compare both of sides, I personally agree with behaviour precedes attitude. Any product that faces a repertoire market should focus on mass marketing to achieve brand salience in the minds of their consumers, naturally the more mass marketing done, the better salience is achieved. It is very important as we want people to have brand salience for the product we are marketing. For example, Coca Cola does mass marketing in order for their product to be consumed by more people more frequently, because Coca Cola is in a repertoire market. When people want to have a soft drink, almost of them would think buy Coca Cola. Other example is hamburger. When people would like to eat a hamburger, they might think go to McDonald. It is because people already have these buying behaviour patterns. As a result, segmenting the market not according to the attitude of the consumer but use they are past buying behaviour patterns.

Reference:Ajzen, I., 1991 The theory of planned behaviour: Organizational Behaviour and Human Decision ProcessesAjzen, I & Fishbein, M., 1980, Understanding Attitudes and Predicting Social Behaviour, Prentice Hall, Eaglewood Cliffs, NJ, USA.

Baker, M.J, 1995, 3rd Ed, Marketing: Theory and Practise, McMillan Press Ltd, London, England.

Dall’ Olmo Riley, F., Ehrenberg, A.S.C., Castleberry, S.B., Barwise ,T.P., & Barnard, N.R., 1997, The variability of attitudinal repeat-rates, International Journal of Research of Marketing, December.

East, R.,1997, Consumer Behaviour: Advances and Applications in Marketing, Prentice Hall, Hertfordshire, UK.

Fazio, R.H., Powell, M.C., & Williams, C.J., 1989, The Role of Attitude accessibility-to-behaviour Process, Journal of Consumer Research, DecemberFestinger, L., 1957, A Theory of Cognitive Dissonance, Stanford University Press, Stanford, CA, USAFishbein, M.,& Ajzen, I., 1975, Belief, Attitude, Intention and Behaviour: An Introduction to Theory and Research, Addison-Wesley Pub. Co, Reading, Mass.

LaPiere, R.T., 1934, Attitudes vs. Actions, Social ForcesSharp, B., 2003, The Lecture Notes, Buyer & Consumer Behaviour University of South Australia. Adelaide.

Schiffman, L., Bednall, D., Cowley, E., O’Cass, A., Watson, J & Kanuk, L., 2001, 2nd Ed, Consumer Behaviour, Prentice Hall. NSW.