The advertising industry operates under the belief that consumer behavior is influenced by their existing memory representations of products or brands. People typically only approach a decision-making situation with prior knowledge or understanding of the product or category they are considering. According to associative network theories of cognition, these mental representations of products and brands are not isolated but rather interconnected in the memory through varying degrees of connection strength.
The strength of the relationship between attitudes and objects affects how easily the attitude can be retrieved from memory and automatically activated when encountering the object. The more frequently the object and attitude are experienced or thought about together, the stronger the association becomes. Attitude accessibility can be measured by the response time, temporarily boosted by recent usage or permanent due to a strong association. Automatic attitude activation occurs even when the individual is not consciously evaluating the object. Accessible attitudes allow for swift initiation of approach or avoidance behavior based on object appraisal. The consequences of attitude accessibility determine the functional role of attitudes in guiding thought and behavior.
There are two types of associated mental representations: attitudes, which can be defined as the connections between an object and a general assessment of that object, and category-exemplar associations, which are connections between an object and a higher-level classification.
Attitudes refer to an individual's evaluation of an object, which is stored in memory as an association between the object and their feeling of favorability or unfavourability towards it. Attitudes are feelings, beliefs, and behavioral intentions towards an object. However, there may be instances where an individual's feelings and beliefs contradict their behavioral intentions. For instance, an individual may not like a restaurant but still visit it because it is a social gathering place for their friends. Similarly, a person may feel uncomfortable consuming a sweet cake due to its high calories but indulge in it occasionally.
Category-exemplar associations can be bidirectional, meaning activating a category can automatically activate a particular exemplar and vice versa. This differs from attitude-object associations, where encountering an attitude object can activate associated evaluations, but evaluations do not typically activate specific attitude objects. The strength of the association between category and exemplar is essential for both directions of activation. Sometimes, the association between an exemplar and a category is so strong that they are automatically linked. In consumer psychology, it is essential to consider both category dominance (the strength of the category-to-brand association) and instance dominance (the strength of the brand-to-category association) when studying brand associations.
When the consumer target's subject, influence, and agent expertise combine in understanding and reacting to the marketer, persuasion coping behaviors emerge. Effectiveness coping behaviors are both precursors to the "final" consequences of attitudes, decisions, etc., and are the results of the activation of persuasion information. According to the PKM, consumers' coping strategies are crucial in their behavior in the marketplace. The fact that so little study has focused on consumer responses and coping mechanisms for market influence is, therefore, unexpected.
An exception to this rule examines and identifies customer response methods to marketers using subjective and empirical methodologies. This study identified 15 techniques consumers utilize to respond to attempts at persuasion and the circumstances in which they are employed. Furthermore, the study showed that consumers generally react in one of two ways: either as "goal seekers," utilizing persuasion agents to further their business objectives, or as "persuasion wraiths," defending against unsolicited persuasion. Goal seekers demonstrate positive countermeasures (e.g., guiding the agent to effectively satisfy the consumer's needs, building a rapport with the representative to get cheaper terms), in contrast to persuasion sentries who display harmful response plans (e.g., inertia, a cessation to avert persuasion).
Higher-order cognitive and motivational processes can affect how individuals perceive physical objects. Research shows that people are more likely to perceive an ambiguous figure in a way that aligns with their desired outcome, a phenomenon known as "wishful thinking." This type of motivation can influence perception similar to biological drives like thirst. Attitudinal biases can also influence perception in a visually sparse environment. An experiment using a computerized tennis game found that participants displayed biased patterns of errors based on their liking or disliking of a confederate who had behaved positively or negatively. These biases were evident despite participants being informed that their judgments were only to test the game's visual display.
The strength of an individual's attitude towards an object can influence their basic perceptual processes by attracting visual attention to the object when it enters their visual field. The influence of attitude accessibility on selective attention appears to be automatic, regardless of intentional efforts to ignore the attitude object. This adaptive, orienting function of attitudes towards objects with hedonic value is relevant to consumer psychologists, who can use the accessibility of consumers' attitudes towards a brand to guide attention to the product rather than solely relying on the object's design.
Attitudes stored in memory based on past experiences with objects allow individuals to access evaluations quickly and easily without generating new appraisals whenever they encounter the object. This makes decision-making processes easier and less resource-dependent. Studies in psychophysiology have shown that making decisions under time pressure can lead to increased physiological reactivity, particularly cardiovascular reactivity. However, accessible attitudes can ease decision-making by reducing this physiological reactivity.
A series of experiments tested this hypothesis by having participants make preference judgments between pairs of abstract paintings under time pressure. Those who had rehearsed their attitudes toward the paintings showed less physiological reactivity during the task, suggesting that accessible attitudes can make decision-making less demanding both cognitively and physically. This has important implications for adjustment and well-being.
To increase the strength of the association between attitudes and objects and therefore increase the accessibility of attitudes, researchers have used various techniques in laboratory experiments. Participants are typically asked to express their attitudes repeatedly, for example, by copying their ratings onto multiple forms or by varying the number of times an attitude object appears on a questionnaire. Another technique involves presenting attitude objects an equal number of times but pairing them with either evaluative or control questions to distinguish the effects of attitude accessibility from mere object accessibility.
When attitudes are strongly associated with objects, this increases the automatic activation of attitudes, as measured by the ease of categorizing items with congruent valence and inhibiting the categorization of items with incongruent valence. The strength of object-evaluation associations, whether manipulated or pre-existing, ultimately determines the extent to which attitudes influence behavior.
Attitudes are more likely to guide behavior when alternatives are salient and available in memory or the environment. When behavioral alternatives must be self-generated, category-exemplar associations play an essential role, as only accessible exemplars can be included in the consideration set. The impact of associative strength and accessibility on consumer judgment is most significant when individuals are not motivated to recall or seek out many choice alternatives and are not motivated to reevaluate the merits of the relevant product.
Associative strength is generally more critical for routine, inexpensive purchases than purchases that elicit fear of choosing poorly. Associative strength also plays a more significant role in situations with time pressure or limited opportunity to deliberate or seek alternatives. Therefore, influencing attitudes is fundamental to advertising products encountered in consumer situations with environmentally salient alternatives.
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