Consumer response to communication programs

Consumer response to communication programs

Outline • Communication objectives • Attitudes and their measurement • Attitude change and persuasion • The two routes to persuasion • Central-route approaches • Peripheral-route approaches

Communication objectives • Category need • Brand awareness • Brand attitude • Brand purchase intention/purchase

Attitudes definition: a tendency to evaluate people (e.g., a salesperson), objects (e.g., a product, an ad), or events (e.g., the purchase of a brand) with some degree of favorability or unfavorability; components of an attitude: • cognitive component: beliefs about the attitude concept; • affective component: feeling-based reactions toward the attitude concept; • conative component: overt behavioral responses or intentions to act;

Measurement of attitudes • Likert scaling: statements that are thought to reflect either a favorable or unfavorable attitude toward the concept of interest are rated on agree-disagree scales (typically 5-point scales) and the ratings are then summated (after reverse-scoring negative items); • semantic differential scaling: the attitude concept is rated on a series of bipolar adjective scales (typically 7-point scales) such as good-bad, favorable-unfavorable, or pleasant-unpleasant;

Advertising is generally informative. __1__ __2__ __3__ __4__ __5__ strongly disagree neither agree strongly disagree agree Most advertising insults my intelligence. __1__ __2__ __3__ __4__ __5__ strongly disagree neither agree strongly disagree agree

My attitude toward advertising can be best described as: Positive _1_ _2_ _3_ _4_ _5_ _6_ _7_ Negative Unfavorable _1_ _2_ _3_ _4_ _5_ _6_ _7_ Favorable Good _1_ _2_ _3_ _4_ _5_ _6_ _7_ Bad

Two routes to persuasion • there are two routes to persuasion: • central route: people scrutinize the arguments in the message; • peripheral route: cues that are not based on a careful consideration of the true merits of the message can have persuasive impact; • a person’s motivation and/or ability to engage in issue-relevant thinking determines the route: • when motivation and ability are high, attitudes change follows the central route; • when motivation and/or ability are low, attitude change occurs via the peripheral route;

The two routes to attitude change persuasive communication nature of cognitive processing ? yes yes ability to process ? motivation to process ? favorable thoughts predominate neither or neutral thoughts predominate unfavorable thoughts predominate no no peripheral cue present ? central positive attitude change central negative attitude change yes peripheral attitude shift

Influences on persuasion variables can influence the extent and direction of attitude change by: • serving as persuasive arguments (e.g., weak vs. strong arguments); • serving as peripheral cues (e.g., source expertise or attractiveness, number of arguments); • affecting the extent and direction of message elaboration (e.g., involvement as a determinant of motivation to process and distraction as a determinant of ability to process);

Effects of the two routes to persuasion • centrally changed attitudes are relatively enduring, resistant to counterpersuasion, and predictive of behavior; • peripherally changed attitudes are more temporary, susceptible to counter-persuasion, and less predictive of behavior;

Involvement and persuasion(Petty et al.) • 160 Ss were exposed to 12 ads, one of which was the target ad for a fictitious product called the Edge razor; • Ss were assigned to one of the 8 cells in a 2 (involvement: low or high) x 2 (argument quality: weak or strong) x 2 (peripheral cue: celebrity or noncelebrity status) factorial design; • involvementwas manipulated by promising Ss a gift of either a brand of disposable razors or a brand of toothpaste and by telling Ss that Edge razors would soon be introduced in their own city or test marketed in another part of the country; • argument qualitywas manipulated by presenting five cogent (e.g., advanced honing method for unsurpassed sharpness) or five specious (e.g., floats in water with a minimum of rust) product claims in the ad; • in the celebrity status condition, famous golf and tennis celebrities endorsed the product, in the noncelebrity status condition Bakersfield, CA, endorsed it; • attitude toward the product and purchase intentions as the dependent variables;

strong arguments attitude attitude noncelebrity celebrity weak arguments involvement involvement low high low high Involvement and persuasion (cont’d) • attitudes: significant involvement x endorser and involvement x argument quality interactions; • intentions: argument quality was a more important determinant of purchase intentions under high rather than low involvement; attitudes were better predictors of intentions under high involvement;

Central-route persuasion: Fishbein’s expectancy-value model attitudes are a function of the strength of beliefs about the attitude concept and the evaluative aspect of those beliefs; Ac = S bi ei • components: • number of salient beliefs (i=1, ..., n) • strength of each belief ( bi) • evaluative aspect of each belief (ei )

My attitude toward Jif creamy peanut butter can be best described as: Unfavorable ___ ___ ___ ___ ___ ___ ___ Favorable (1) (2) (3) (4) (5) (6) (7)

fatty creamy Jif Unlikely ___ ___ ___ ___ ___ ___ ___ Likely (1) (2) (3) (4) (5) (6) (7) Bad ___ ___ ___ ___ ___ ___ ___ Good (-3) (-2) (-1) (0) (+1) (+2) (+3) fresh roasted peanut taste

Changing cognitive structure using the EV model • add a new positive belief; • increase the strength of an existing positive belief; • increase the evaluation of a strongly held positive belief;

Central-route persuasion: The cognitive response model • people actively relate information contained in persuasive messages to extant knowledge stored in memory and generate idiosyncratic thoughts in response to the message (so-called cognitive responses); • attitude change depends on • the extent of processing • the valence of thoughts

The measurement of cognitive responses • use of post-message thought listings to assess cognitive responses; • when content analyzing subjects’ thought protocols, cognitive responses are often classified as support arguments, counter arguments, or source derogations;

Peripheral-route persuasion • source effects: credibility, attractiveness, and liking of the spokesperson; • message effects: number of arguments, inferences based on brand name or product attributes, etc.; • context effects: message repetition, program or editorial context, mood;

Using classical (respondent) conditioning for peripheral persuasion elicits UCS UCR I. elicits UCR II. UCS paired with NS (CS to be) comes to elicit III. CS CR

Classical conditioning (cont’d) • CS and UCS should be paired repeatedly and consistently; • forward conditioning is better than backward conditioning; • CC is more effective when the UCS and CS are novel, salient, and relevant or similar to each other (because associations are more easily formed);

Music and pen choice (Gorn) • one-minute extract of music from “Grease” as the positive UCS, one minute of atonal Indian classical music as the negative UCS; light blue and beige pens as originally neutral CS; • Ss watched a slide of either a light blue or beige pen while hearing either liked or disliked music; • as a reward for their participation in the study, Ss could choose either a light blue or beige pen; • finally, Ss were asked why they had picked a pen with a particular color;

Music and pen choice (cont’d) • effect of music on pen choice: choice of advertised pen choice of non- advertised pen liked music 79% 21% disliked music 30% 70% • 91% of the people who provided a reason for their choice mentioned color preference as their reason;

Attitudes and behavior:The Theory of Reasoned Action (TRA)(Fishbein and Ajzen) B = f(BI) = w1 Aact + w2 SN where: B = behavior BI = behavioral intention Aact = attitude toward the behavior SN = subjective norm w1, w2 = weights that reflect the relative influence of Aact and SN

Components of the TRA • Aact: a person’s evaluation of performing the behavior • Aact = S bi ei • components: • outcomes or consequences of behavior (i=1, ..., m) • strength of behavioral beliefs (bi) • evaluative aspect of each outcome or consequence (ei) • SN: a person’s perceptions of the social pressures put on • him or her to perform the behavior • SN = S NBj MCj • components: • relevant referents for behavior (j=1, ..., n) • strength of normative beliefs (NBj) • motivation to comply (MCj)

Components of the TRA (cont’d) BI: a plan or an expectation to perform the behavior , which is a function of both personal and social factors; BI = w1 Aact + w2 SN B: actual performance of the behavior B = f(BI) Note: if a person does not have complete control over performance of the behavior, behavioral intentions and behavior may also be a function of the person’s perceived behavioral control (i.e., how easy or difficult performance of the behavior is thought to be);

In-class exercise: Predicting coupon usage

TRA applied to coupon usage (cont’d) .71a EV1 rewards -.08b Aact EV2 .51a encumbrances -.12a EV3 .68a inconveniences BI B .48a NB1MC1 spouse .31a .10b SN NB2MC2 family Note: standardized path coefficients, with a p<.01, b p<.05 (one-tailed) .05 NB3MC3 friends

Conditions under which attitudes and intentions will predict behavior • volitional control • correspondence in level of specificity • action: single/multiple acts • target: concept at which action is directed • context: situational circumstance of action • time: when an action is to be performed • stability of attitudes and intentions

Consumer response to communication programs