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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.

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A simple responsedoes not alw-ays tell us ever'.thing we need to know, either about u'ltythe consumer feels a certain way torvard a product or about what marketers can tlo to change his attitude. our beliefs (accurate or not) about a product often are key Itt how we evaluate it. Warner-Lambert discovered this while doing research for its l;resh Burst Listerine mouthwash. A research firm paid 37 fanrilies to allow it to set up cameras in their bathrooms and watch their daily routines (maybe they should Itavejust checked outYouTube). Participants who bought both Fresh Burst and rival Scopesaid they used mouthwash to make their breath smell good. But Scope users swished around the liquid and then spit it out, while Listerin; users kept the product in their mouths for a long time (one respondent held the stuff in until he got in the car and finally spit it out in a sewer a block away!).These findings told Listerine the brand still hadn't shaken its medicine-like irnage.+s Becauseattitudes are so complex, marketing researchersmay use m*ltiattribute attitudemodels to understand them. This fype of model urgrrrl, that a consumer,s attitude toward an attitude object (,4,)depends on the beliefs she has about several of its attributes- \Mhen we use a multiattribute model, we assume that we can identify these specific beliefs and combine them to derive a measure of the consumer,s overaII attitude.We'll describe how these models work byusing the example of a consurner evaluating a complex attitude object that should be very familiar to you: a college. Basic multiattribute models specify three elements.s' C Attributes are characteristics of the A,. Aresearcherwould try to ide'tify the attributes that most consumers would use when they evaluate the A,,. For example, one of a college'sattributes is its scholarly reputation. s Bliefs are cognitions about the specifrc Ao (usually relative to others like it). A belief measure assessesthe extent to which the consumer perceives that a brand possessesa particular attribute. For example, a student might believe that the llniversity of North carolina is strong academically. ' Importance weights reflect the relative priority of an attribute to the consumer. Although people might consider an Ao on a number of attributes, some are Iikelyto be more important than others (i.e.,theywill give them greaterweight). Furthermorg these weights are likely to differ across consumers. In the case of colleges and universities, for example, one student might stress research opportunities, whereas another might assign greater weight to athletic programs.

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

The Fish,bein tHodel

The rnost influential multiattribute model is called the Fishbein mod,el,named after its primary developer.srThe model measures three components of attitude: Satfent beltefs people have about an Ao (i.e., those beliefs about the object a person consfders during evaluation). 2 Obiect-attribwte tinkages, or the probability that a particular object has an important attribute! Eualwatfon af each of the irnportant attributes. Note; however, that the model makes some assumptions that may not always be warranted- It assum,esthat we have been able to adequately specify all of the I

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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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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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are Consumer researchershave used multiattribute models for many years' but they her predict doesn't attitude plagued by a major problem: In many cases,a person's report behavior.In a classicdemonstration of "do as I say,not as I do," many studies her and something a very low correlation between a person's reported attitude toward question they that actual behavior toward it. Some researchers are so discouraged whether attitudes are of any use at all in understanding behavior'sz This questionable linkage between attitudes and behavior is a big headache for examadvertisers: Consumers can love a corunercial yet still not buy the product' For ple, one of the most popular U.S. TV commercials in recent years featured basketball player Shaquitle O'Neal for Pepsi.Although the company spent $67 million on this spot percent' and other similar ones in a single year, sales of Pepsi-Cola fell by close to 2 even as sales of archrival Coca-Cola increased by B percent during the same Period's:

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In response, researchers tinkered with the Fishbein model to improve its predictive conabiliry They call the newer version the theory of reasoned action.sqThis model not still is tains several important additions to the original, and although the model to modifications perfect, it does i betterlob of prediction.s Let's look at some of the this model.
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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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