Consumer.ology: The Market Research Myth, the Truth About Consumers, and the Psychology of Shopping by Philip Graves

Author:Philip Graves [Graves, Philip]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: General, Marketing, Business & Economics, Consumer Behavior, Research, Consumers, Marketing research
ISBN: 9781857885507
Publisher: Nicholas Brealey Publishing
Published: 2010-11-30T05:00:00+00:00

8 Mistaking the value of claimed attitudes

It is relatively common for research to explore consumer attitudes to brands, products, or services. A whole raft of possible thoughts relating to a brand is devised, and research respondents are asked to say to what extent they can identify with the sentiment the statements contain; often an attitudinal scale is used so that people can indicate the degree to which they agree or disagree. There is a widespread acceptance that if you can identify someone’s attitude to something then you have information that is indicative of how they will behave. Undoubtedly, this notion is attractive since it is how most people would prefer to believe they themselves function. If someone likes brand X the most, it seems logical that all things being equal, they will select brand X. Of course, things are rarely equal, and if the unconscious mind isn’t filtering by likability there is no reason for the outcome to reflect that dimension.

As far back as 1934 Richard LaPiere discovered that claimed attitudes to racial prejudice didn’t reflect behavior.40 He visited more than 200 hotels and restaurants with a Chinese couple and found that only one refused to serve them. When he wrote to ask the policy of the establishment six months later, over 90% claimed they would not serve Chinese people. Subsequent studies have found virtually no correlation between attitudes and behavior across a wide range of subjects. For example, you may not be surprised to hear that a lot of people around the world have “green” attitudes but show little or no evidence of environmentally friendly behavior.41 Similarly, we may want to believe that we like something (healthy food, for example), but an analysis of our past purchases (or waistline) may reveal that less healthy selections are made far more frequently.

In research I conducted as part of my undergraduate thesis, I explored the attitudes of 11–16-year-old schoolchildren to statistics. At the time a diverse set of subjects made some use of statistical methods and someone who ran my statistics degree course must have been interested to know whether this was destined to produce a generation of students with a passion for their subject. As part of this review I devised a questionnaire containing, among other things, a battery of attitudinal questions. The technically correct approach to such questions is to include balanced pairs statements, so that if one presents an issue negatively, another (some way down the list) will present it positively. What I discovered was that the children tended to agree with whatever statement they were answering, effectively contradicting themselves. I hypothesized at the time that they were too suggestible to use attitudinal questions reliably. I have since come to realize that several factors, not least the environment, could have contributed to this (the interviews were conducted in a school), and that the statements themselves were not likely to be a reliable indicator of anything in any case!

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