As a brand, wouldn’t you want to have the behind-the scenes look to what your target consumer audience is thinking, what they value, how they’re feeling and what drives their buyer decisions? Well, to get this exclusive view, you need to understand one simple thing, attitudes. This simple term for marketers can unlock the ability to influence, clarify, and predict the target consumers attitudes. This way you don’t just respond, you strategically plan out the next move.
What are attitudes?
Attitudes by definition are the overall opinions of a brand, a product or service. These opinions can influence anything, from brand loyalty to buyer decisions. But there are three elements every single consumer’s attitude is made up of:
- Cognitive Component: This is the thoughts, the beliefs, and the knowledge a consumer/potential consumer already understands about the brand, the product or the service.
- Affective Component: This is the emotional reactions and the feelings that are connected to personal experiences with specific services, products or brands.
- Behavioral Component: This is how a consumer/potential consumer acts towards a specific brand, product or service based on their feelings and opinions about it.
Combined together, these 3 components shape their consumers attitude and behavior towards a product or service and even an entire brand. To understand how each element can influence and predict a consumer’s attitude can help marketers refine and change their marketing strategies in the long run.
Consumer Behavior: Understanding Attitudes
To understand attitudes, you need to first understand consumer behavior. To understand consumer behavior, you need to first, recognize consumer mindsets.
What is the attitude your consumers hold? Is it balanced, more negative, or more positive? This deeper understanding allows to recognize and connect specific areas where brands are shining in or where there is an area that needs some work. For example, your target consumer audience has a negative reaction and attitude towards a specific product or services price. This can indicate that there may need to be revisions on pricing strategies for that specific product or service.
This insight can be put together through social media engagement (likes, comments, Direct Messages, etc.), customer reviews and surveys. Dove is the perfect example for this. Dove conducts surveys and focus groups to understand their target audiences attitudes towards beauty and self-image. This allows them to understand and revise any products, messaging and marketing strategies. With doing this research, Dove was able to launch their “Real Beauty” campaign back in 2004. This campaign focused on using real women, not traditional models, focusing on diversity, authenticity and inclusivity. This campaign reflected positively through the feedback Dove received from their target audience, who expressed their satisfaction with Dove’s new and different strategy.
Another aspect to understanding consumer behavior is cognitive dissonance.. Cognitive Dissonance is when a consumers behavior and their beliefs don’t match each other and clash. This could mean a consumer believing in high-quality products. but buying from brands who are known for unethical and unsustainable practices (which is about 65% of consumers).
This insight could be useful for marketers by recognizing consumers perceptions and them not aligning with their reality (also known as ideal state). This can be shown through customer feedback and focus groups to address this source of dissonance and improve consumer satisfaction and brand loyalty.
Influencing Consumer Behavior
When a brand wants to influence consumer behavior, the first aspect of doing so is understanding that emotional connections are key. When a brand impacts a consumer on an emotional level, there is a positive and trusting attitude that creates and drives not only sales, but also strong brand loyalty. Looking at Kay Jewelers they have shaped consumer behavior and attitudes by installing their jewelry, not just as accessories, but as symbols of love and stages of live beginning, completing and succeeding. The emotional connection to special life moments has helped create extremely strong connections with specifically male consumers (shopping for engagement and bridal jewelry).
Conclusion
When a brand understands consumer attitudes and can influence consumer behavior, it is more than just knowing how your target audience thinks or feels about a brand, product or service. It’s truly about using those aspects and insights to reevaluate and strategically plan future campaigns, messaging and marketing techniques to understand and recognize where your consumers stand, what they will do next and influence their life and buyer decisions that align with your brand’s goals.
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