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t:ll$rtry"tiT 7 Attitudes tle;lendingon the inclividual, nrrrl, some of thesewill be more or lessimportarrt (,,l.ess l l l l ir r g! "" T as t esgre a t!" ).An o th e r p ro b l e m i s that w hen a person deci des to take ttr'liontoward an attitude object, his bel-ravior is influenced Ly other factors such as wlrt:therhe feelsthat his family or friends would approve.T6crefore , attittt4e nrcclels Ity to specify the different elements that might work together to intlue'ce peopie's r.vuluations of attitude objects.
Thedesire to baskin reflected gloryby products buying we associate witha valued attitude objectcreates numerous marketingopportunities. America s MajorLeague (MLS)certainly Soccer understands this; it's now the only majorAmerican team sportsleagueotherthan NASCAR racing carsto allowadvertising on the frontof (thisis common teamjerseys in Europe, Asia, and LatinAmerica). Forming a logical unitrelation, RedBullwasquick to act by purchasing ads on jerseys of the New York RedBulls. Still, the league intends to police thetypes of unitrelations teams can form.The MLScomrnissioner noted,*We don'twantthe localbail-bonds company on thefrontof theColumbus jerseyJ'co crew At the college level, manyschools in addition to ASUreaphugerevenues by licensing theirschool's n a m ea n d l o g o . Schools with strongathleticprograms, suchas Michigan, Penn State, andAuburn, clean up byselling millions of dollars worth of merchandise (everything from T-shirts to toilet seats).Yalewas a relativelatecomerto this game,but the director of licensing explained the decision to profit fromthe useof the school's nameandthe likeness of bulldogmascotHandsome Dan:"Werecognize that our namemeans a lot-evento people who didn'tgo here. Plus, this waywe can crackdownon the Naked CoedLacrosse shirtsouttherewith Yaleon them."a7
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relevant attributes that, for example, a student uses in evaluating her choices about which college to attend. The model also assumes that the student will go through the process (formally or informally) of identifying a set of relevant attributes, weighing them, and summing them. Although this particular decision is likely to be highly involving, it is still possible she will instead form an attitude according to an overall affective response (a process researchersterm affect referral). By combining these three elements, we compute a consumer's overall attitude toward an object (we'll see later how researchershave modified this basic equation to increase its accuracv).The basic formula is: A i l p:2B i 1pl i p where i: attribute
,l : b ra n d k: consumer 1 : the importance weight given attribute i by consumer k B : consumer k's belief regarding the extent to which brandT possesses attribute i A: aparticular consumer's (k's) attitude score for brandT
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We obtain the overall attitude score (A) by multiplying a consumer's rating of each attribute for all of the brands she considered by the importance ratingfor that attribute. To seehow this basic multiattribute model might work, let's suppose we want to predict which college a high school senior is likely to attend. After months of waiting anxiously, Saundra gets accepted to four schools. Becauseshe must now decide among these, we would first like to know which attributes Saundra will consider when she forms an attitude toward each school. We can then ask Saundra to assign a rating regarding how well each school performs on each attribute and also determine the relative importance of the attributes to her. By summing scoreson each attribute (afterweighting each by its relative importance), we compute an overall attitude score for each school. Table 7.1 shows these
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towarda attitude student's A prospective she bythe attributes is influenced college to andthe extent to be important considers possesses those whichshefeelsthat school attitudes.
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it seemsthat Saundrahas the most fah,?othetical ratings.Basedon this analysis, someonewho would like to attend a is clearly She Smith. toward voiable attitude rather than a schoolthat offers reputation academic with a solid collegefor women party almosphere. program or a a strongathletic
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another school yiu were the director of marketing for Northland College, Suppose to improve this analysis data from you use the How might was considering. Saundra your image? If prospectivestudentsview one brand as supeon RelaiiveAdvantage. Capitatize rioi on a particular attribute, a marketer needs to convince consumerssuch as Saundrathat this particular attribute is important. For example,although Saundra ratesNorthland'siocial atmospherehighly, she doesnot believethis attribute is a valued aspectfor a college.As Northland'smarketing director,you might emphaor eventhe developsizethe importanceof an activesociallife, varied experiences, she makes strong when forges student thatS contacts business future of ment collegefriendshiPs. Strengthen Perceived ProducVAttribste Linkages. A marketer may discover that consumersdo not equatehis brand with a certain attribute.Advertisingcampaigns often address this problem when they stress a specific quality to consumers (e.g.,"new and impioved"). Saundra apparently does not think much of Northtrid's academicquiliry athletic programs,or library facilities'You might develop an informational campaignto improve these perceptions(e g, "little known facts about Northland"). Add a New Attribute. Product marketersftequently try to distinguish themselves from their competitorsby adding a product feature.Northland Colleger4ight try to emphasizesome uniqueaspect, such as a hands-on internship program for businessmajors that takesadrantageofties to the local community'
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your competitors' lilffusffe competitors' tatings. Finally,you might try to decrease you might publ case, In this aduertisingstrategy. higherratingsby using acomparatiue Northland which with schools area of lish an ad that lists the tuition ratesof a number get' its srudents money the for the value comparesfavorablyand ernphasize
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Like the motivations we discussed in Chapter 4, attitudes have both direction and strength. A person may like or dislike an attitude object with varying degrees of conand fidence or conviction. It is helpful to distinguish betr,veenfirmly held attitudes attitude an holds who person a trecause those that are more superficial, especialty iswith greater convictionis mCIrenk;fy to act on it.ssOne study on environmental congreater express who people that sues and marketing activities found, for example, viction in their feetings regarding environmentally responsible behaviors such as recycling show greater conri*t*trry between attitudes and behavioral intentions's7 However, al the old expression goes, "the road to hell is paved with good intenperformingthe intended behavior. Sayyou tiort$-'Manyfactorsmightinterferewith it' save up to buy a newnpple iPhone. Although you have every intention of buying or store' Apple the to way the on joh, get mugged stuffhippens:You mighi lose your arrive at the store or,5.,to findthey ve run out of the item- It is not surprising, then, that in some instances researchers find that instead of knowing our intentions, our (this is past purchase behavior does a better job of predicting our future behavior customers likely identify that one of the foundations of direct marketing techniques basedontheirpurchasehistories}.seThetheoryofreasonedactionaimstomeasure (such as that inte*ttans' recognizing that certain uncontrollable factors behctviarert accuracy' percent 100 mugger) Iimit our ability to predict the future with
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hrhaps most importantly, the theory acknowledges the power of other people to influence what we do..Much as we miy hate to admit it, what we think others woultl likeusto do rnay override ourovr'n preferences- Some research approaches try to as"putrlic'attitudes and purchase decisions rnight lx: sessthe extent towhich peerple's different fromwhat theywould doin private- For example, one firm uses a techniqtrt' go to the actttal site where people tlst: rt it calls "engineeredtheatre." Researchers