Consumer Attitude

As consumers each of us has a vast number of attitudes towards products, services, advertisement, retail store etc. Attitudes are all pervasive, when we say that we like or dislike someone or something, we actually are expressing our attitude towards that thing (Schiffman & Kanuk, 2009, p. 256). Allport (1954) has described the attitude concept as

"the primary building stone in the edifice of social psychology (p. 45)," and the extensive attitude literature in the past 20 years supports this contention (Wicker, 1969). The term attitude comes from the Latin words apto (aptitude or fitness) and acto (posture of the body) meaning to do or to act. Earlier in 18th century attitude was referred to the physical orientation of the person in a given

According to tri-component model, there are three primary types of information on which attitudes can be based (Breckler, 1984; Rosenberg & Hovland, 1960; Zanna & Rempel, 1988; Petty, Wheeler & Tormala, 2003; Schiffman and Kanuk, 2009): cognitions or beliefs (e.g., “This car gets 10 miles per gallon”), affect or feelings (e.g., “Owning this car makes me happy”), and actions or behaviour (e.g., “I have always driven this brand of car.”).

The first part of the tri-component model consists of person’s cognition, i.e. the knowledge and perception that are acquired by a combination of direct experience with attitude object and related information from various sources. This knowledge and resulting perception commonly take form of beliefs, i.e. consumer believes that attitude object possesses various attributes and that the specific behaviour will lead to specific outcome (Schiffman and Kanuk, 2009). The affective component of an attitude is consumer’s emotions or feelings about a particular product or brand. The conative component of the attitude is concerned with the likelihood or tendency that an individual will undertake a specific action or behave in a particular way. In marketing and consumer research this component is frequently treated as an expression of the consumer’s intension to buy (Schiffman and

When we have to respond quickly to something, how we feel about it can guide how we react (Bassili & Roy, 1998; Breckler & Wiggins, 1989; Sanbonmatsu & Fazio, 1990). When people question someone’s attitude, they refer to beliefs and feelings related to a person or event and the resulting behaviour. Taken together, favourable or unfavourable evaluative reactions— whether exhibited in beliefs, feelings, or inclinations to act— define a person’s attitude toward something (Olson & Zanna, 1993). Multi-attribute model portrays consumer’s attitude with regard to an attitude object as a function of consumer’s perception as assessment of key attributes or beliefs held with regard to a particular attitude object. By his two articles Lutz (1975,1977) have purported to show that a person’s attitude towards a brand can be formed and then altered by changing the person’s cognitive structure. The cognitive structures were measured on the constructs of FISHBEIN’S ATTITUDE MODEL (Fishbein and Ajzen