Model of Consumer Attitude Formation †Free Samples to Students

Question: Discuss about the Model of Consumer Attitude Formation. Answer: Introduction: The following report illustrates and identifies the key elements in the market that influences customers decision on purchase. In order to assist the report few people have extended their helping hand whose consumption behaviour and decision making process has been examined. It is known to all that the consumer behaviour has different modes. As per the conventional categorisation, consumer behaviour can be divided into two major parts. One is the internal influences on consumer behaviour and the other is the external influences in the consumer behaviour. Pertaining to the purchasing decision on a product or service, consumers are highly selective and they keep their decision making process alive during the understanding of the product they are offered in the market. Internal influences of the consumers constitute of the perceptions, learning, motivation, behaviour or attitude and personality of the consumers in terms of the offered products or services (Claiborne and Sirgy 2015). As it has already been said that the influences on the consumers decision making process can be categorised into two segments, such as : internal influence and external influence, the report is going to proceed with the detailed discussion of these two segments (Solomon 2014). Internal Influence: There are four key stages of perception of the consumers regarding the product or service they are offered. Followings are the details discussions of the four key stages of the perception of the consumers. These four stages are: Exposure: When a consumer senses the availability of the product in the market or it launch, exposure occurs. The advertisements play a major role in making the first stage of perception occur. This is the primary stage that provides the customers or the consumers with an initial idea of the introduction of the product. While looking at the posters or billboards or hearing about the product from radio or television commercials, customers or consumers hoard the basic information about the products or the services. For instance, a consumer wanting to purchase a new car would at first gather information from the commercial advertisements. This is called the selective exposure. In case of the chosen customers, the selective exposure the used during the perception making process during their purchase of latest Apple iphone 7. They were introduced with the brand seven years ago and they have been continuing to be witness the exposure of the brand in the recent years as well. The first deci sion made by those customers was during the first product launch of Apple iphone 6 on September 2015. The initial exposure occurred when they watched the creative advertisement in the television showing the high quality phone and its camera. The second stage of consumer perception is the attention that follows exposure. Attention occurs after the required information about the product or service exposed to the consumers. Once the product is recognised by the customer it starts drawing attention of them. Attention is generally drawn with the help of product appearance. The products are often made lucrative so as t draw attention of the customers. Attention drawing criterion of the products or services depends on the look, shape, size, colour and movement of an object. An example of product attention to the customers could be the advertisements of the cars. For instance, the latest advertisement of Samsung S8 that has created a huge effect upon the consumers mind because of the look of the projected mobile phone. Showing phone from different angle has also drawn the attention of the people towards it in the very first look. Another example can be taken into consideration while discussing the second stage of perception. The advertisement of Audi succinctly depicts the quality of the product and it clearly expresses the sound of the cars that is highly alluring to the customers. The colour of the projected car is also a matter of attraction (Carrington, Neville and Whitwell 2014). The third stage of consumer perception is interpretation. Consumer interpretation refers to the assessment of the feeling and attachment towards the exposure of a product or service- specifically the brand introduced to the customers. Consumer interpretation can be further categorised into two different parts. These are: Cognitive Interpretation of the Consumers: Cognitive interpretation of the customers refers to a space where the stimuli are placed into a prevalent category of implication. It adds new meaning to the already existing category. Affective Interpretation of the Consumers: Affective Interpretation refers to the emotional response or the primary feeling of the customers to the product or brand they are offered by a company. This is elicited by the stimuli. In case of the chosen customers, the experience with Apple iphone 7 can be considered as the cognitive interpretation as they were already using Apple iphone 6. It can be considered as the cognitive interpretation because the feeling towards the new iphone has been an added one. It was added to the already existing category. Interpretation is a large area that is highly utilised by the by the marketers in order to create a bunch of loyal customers towards the brand by adding adequate and apt information pertaining to the product or service on offer. The fourth stage of perception is the memory of the customers that is impacted by the offered brand. The long term or short term storage of the consumers pertaining to the quality or information of the product they opt for purchasing, is called the memory. The memory is stimulated with the help of the past experience of the customers pertaining to a product. The product or the service they have already use may have longer r short term effect upon the customers choice, hence they might opt for reusing the same brand in a modified version. In case of the chosen customers, they have already used Apple iphone 6. Hence, the positive impact in the usage of the phone has stimulated the in purchasing Apple iphone 7 that is the modified version of iphone. Perception is nothing but the created stimuli upon the customers by the marketers. In order to draw attention towards the brand the marketers often create bold stimuli so that the consumers automatically generate feeling towards the product on offer. For instance, the above poster projecting Samsung Galaxy S8 depicts the quality of the camera in the night vision. The poster no doubt creates a positive level of attraction that is meant to be a strong perception of the targeted customers. The quality of the camera as projected in the advertisement has the effect upon the people that is strictly related to consumers relation to their picture clicking habit. The scenery depicted in the posted is also a lucrative one that exhibits a panorama. The mild emerging light from the horizon has effective attraction upon the customers. These are the bold advertising strategies used by the marketers. In the very first introduction of the phone the consumers are made clear about information that the phone has high capacity of capturing the nature in its camera. The quality of the camera has thus already been taken into consideration in the mind of the customers. It can thus be said that perception is one of the strongest tools to attract the cus tomers towards a brand. Motivation is one of the most important driving forces in terms of decision making process of the consumers. It is defined as the psychological force that determines the direction of the behaviour of an individual, effort and persistence. It intensifies and directs consumers decision regarding the purchase of a product or service on offer. Consumer behaviour in terms of motivation has been illustrated by Maslow in his theory of hierarchy. The motive hierarchy model of Maslow depicts the entire process of motivation influencing the purchase decision of the consumers. The emotional, motivational and cognitive feeling of the consumers pertaining to a particular brand or more is called the attitude of the consumers. This is a process that is gradual as well as sudden. It is both positive as well as negative. Once a customer generates an attitude towards particular product or service, it is quite difficult to change. The negative remains negative and positive remain positive. However, it is the obligation or the responsibility of the marketers that the attitude that is negative towards their brand should be changes through motivation and quality advancement of the product. The change of belief from negative to positive is channelized through effective advertisement strategies and direct communication with the consumers through offering great service (Kahle and Chiagouris 2014). However, the chosen customers always had positive attitude towards the use of iphone. Hence, it was easier for the marketers to positively affect them in making the decision o f the purchase. They never had any problem with the brand they were previously using. Hence they opted for its modified version. As it has already been mentioned, there are three key areas of consumers attitude towards the product or service they use or they have previously used. These are: cognitive that is called the beliefs of the customers about product or service, the effective process or the feelings of the customers about the offered product or service and the behavioural process or the response tendencies. Cognitive: the cognitive attitude can both be positive or negative. The taste of pastries is always good- this is the positive cognitive attitude of the customers. Affective: Feelings can be held by the customers pertaining to the quality of the product or services they are offered. The feelings can both be dependent and interdependent. Behavioural: day to day behaviour of the customers also determines the purchase decision for a product. Demographics influences refer to the size, structure and distribution of the population of a particular area or market. Size of the population refers to the active number of people present in the market. As a matter of fact, size of the population does not have direct impact upon the decision of the consumers for the purchase. However the marketing strategy becomes easy if the marketers have an adequate number of populations in the market. The population structure refers to the income, education and occupation of the population. This has great impact upon the determination of the consumers while purchasing a product. Group Influences: Humans are undoubtedly social animals. Through the formation of group they make decisions. Hence, group influence is one of the strongest external influences helping the consumers take decisions on purchase. These groups are called the reference groups. Reference groups can be segmented into three categories, aspirational reference groups, associative references groups and dissociative reference group. Apsirational reference group refers to the one that is used by a firm as its spokesperson. Most of them are celebrity and they are highly influential to the customers. Lifestyle of the consumers has direct impact upon the purchase decision. For example, people with luxurious life style would decide to make the purchase of the luxurious products and they would not think much about the price of the brand. Apple iphone 6 is going to be apt in this regard. Conclusion: It can thus be concluded that the influences on the consumer behaviour has both positive and negative effect. The marketers are highly skilful in understanding the actual behavioural mode of the consumers thus entailing the marketing strategies in need. Conclusion Internal External Perception: Perception refers to the interpretation and organising capability of the consumers pertaining to a product Motivation: It is defined as the psychological force that determines the direction of the behaviour of an individual, effort and persistence. Group Influence: When a consumer understands the group that has direct influence upon their decision making process, it ic called the group influence Reference: Carrington, M.J., Neville, B.A. and Whitwell, G.J., 2014. Lost in translation: Exploring the ethical consumer intentionbehavior gap.Journal of Business Research,67(1), pp.2759-2767. Claiborne, C.B. and Sirgy, M.J., 2015. Self-image congruence as a model of consumer attitude formation and behavior: A conceptual review and guide for future research. InProceedings of the 1990 Academy of Marketing Science (AMS) Annual Conference(pp. 1-7). Springer International Publishing. Claiborne, C.B. and Sirgy, M.J., 2015. 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