Selling is helping the buying

I was sitting alongside the MD of a European MNC’s operations in India. We were meeting a team representing a major American software company. The salesperson in-charge of the account walked in with his Country Manager, and a technology expert. The Country Manager simply hijacked the meeting by virtue of his seniority. He had a few things to ‘tell’ us about the product, and those chosen features were faithfully elaborated upon by his Techie Product Expert.

Brand Marketing Shifts: Attitude follows 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 the 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.