Attitudes Follow Behaviour

The debate over which comes first, attitudes or behaviours, has been going on for a long time. However, recent evidence seems to be tipping the scale in favour of behaviours, which is to say that people act, then form attitudes after they establish a fact that is consistent with their behaviours. If this is true, then role of the brand marketers needs to be seriously reconsidered.

Probably, the best-known theory lending support to the notion that behaviours cause attitudes is Leon Festinger’s theory of cognitive dissonance. Though Festinger’s focus was on dissonance between attitudinal beliefs, his theory helps explain things like the shifts in consumer attitudes typically observed after big-ticket purchases. People actively seek to assuage buyer’s remorse through a process of post-purchase rationalization. That is acting positively about a product they have already bought relative to competition and downplaying concerns or perceptions of defects and shortcomings. It is the behaviour – the purchase – that causes attitudes to change.

Another well-known empirical result showing that behaviours change attitudes comes from research into brainwashing techniques used on American Prisoners-of-Wars during the Korean War. As explained by former Arizona State University psychologist, Robert Cialdini, in his bestseller, Influence: Science and Practice. Prisoners were forced to sign essays denouncing the U.S. irrespective of the fact that these prisoners did not believe a single word of what they were signing and were likely to collaborate with their captors. The dynamic at work is one of consistency. Having made a small behavioural commitment, even under pressure, subsequent acts and attitudes seek to maintain consistency. Over time, such small steps can add up to very big changes in attitudes.

Commitment and consistency is a well-practiced marketing technique. When brand marketers run contests for people to send in testimonials, it is to induce a small act of commitment that can lead to big changes in brand attitudes. This is often the only purpose of people collecting signatures for petitions on public issues. More generally, this is known as the foot-in-the-door technique.

Nevertheless, despite this long-standing body of research and practice, much of what brand marketers do is focused, instead, on changing attitudes. The most influential concept in the history of modern marketing is the hierarchy of effects model. The idea of the model is that attitudes must go through a sequence of shifts before a purchase will be made. This practice of brand marketing focuses on moving consumers down a path as illustrated:

Awareness          Knowledge          Liking             Preference                   Conviction          Purchase

 Neuroscience News (2012) reviewed some of the growing body of research, calling into question the notion that people “make rational economic decisions.” This is particularly true in the face of risks, especially risks never encountered before. In such cases, the emotional centres of the brain kick in, dominating decisions and guiding choices.

The core essence of economics is the study of scarcity – how people make choices in the face of scarcity. Most economists would argue that the relevant issue for their discipline is not the inner workings of the brain but the results of their models in the real world. The problem with the economists’ argument is that it depends on the performance of their models, and these often fail in spectacular ways as seen in the financial crisis of 2007-2009. Similarly, brand marketers might argue that as long as advertising boosts sales, then it is academic whether attitudes or behaviours come first, or whether emotions trump rationality.

Certainly, all the usual reasons for marketing failures are true. The tired old cliché about “half of my advertising doesn’t work but I don’t know which half” bellies the confident face brand marketers put on for the job. The fact of the matter is marketing is hard to do. Competition is tougher. Clutter is worse than ever. Consumer resistance to marketing is growing. New technologies are crowding people’s attention and making it easier for consumers to shop around. But the one thing we have yet to really consider as a profession is the more fundamental issue of which comes first. Maybe the biggest reason why it is so hard is that we keep putting the cart before the horse.

Ultimately, all that matters in brand marketing is sales. These questions of causal priority and the prominence of emotions can definitively be resolved by seeing what happens in the marketplace. The only way to put these issues to test is to raise them, and that is where brand marketing is still running behind the curve.