Psychological Theory of Cognitive Dissonance in the Study of Consumer Choice - Essay Example

 Consumer choice: Cognitive or behavioral? The increasing pressure of the competitive marketing economy has made it imperative for the firm to understand the consumer behavior: what they want to buy, how they buy and where they are buying? Every firm needs to have an accurate knowledge about the every aspect of consumers. It is not the time merely to induce the customers to buy what the company wants but to frame their policies from production to packaging and final selling of their products keeping in mind needs and awareness of the consumers. Any success of the management depends upon his thoughts and perception on every aspect of business like product, advertisement and after sales service for the satisfaction of the customers. This is the most integrated approach of business management, which is also known as consumer oriented approach. The consumer oriented approach involves four major implications or conditions required to be adopted by firm, for e.g. to have know-how about the needs and aspirations of the consumers like what they are willing to buy and pay for. Secondly firm should have an overall awareness of demands of the market even before the commencement of the production, and in highly technology industries before the production is planned. Needs and requirements of the consumers should be monitored at regular intervals so that company always keeps itself abreast of the competition. Top management must also integrate all the four components of the market like product development, pricing, place, distribution or promotion in a single plan based on the complete knowledge of consumer behavior. (Foxall, Goldsmith & Brown 1998: 4) In short, marketing is all about the fulfillment of the costumer’s needs and aspirations. The question here is what constitutes consumers behavior and where it takes place? The shape of the consumer behavior is defined not just on the basis of the personal stimulation but also on the basis of the attributes that environment induces consumers to adopt that behavior like physical surroundings, social surroundings, temporal perspective, task definition and antecedent states. (Foxall, Goldsmith & Brown 1998: 185) As a consumer, it is so natural on his part to get affected from the physical environment while making a choice to buy. This implies seasonal choice, and societal and religious patterns. Their buying behavior is also dependent on the social interactions and the general tendency of the people to copy others. Their choice also depends on the way their situation demands in their familial and societal set up. It also depends on the moods and general temperament of the consumers. It is also said that effect of environment on consumer behavior also depends on the subjective perception of his or her surrounding rather than the objectivity. For Lutz and Kakkar, this is the psychological situation, “an individual’s internal response to or interpretations of all factors at a particular time or place of observations which are not stable intra-individual characteristics or stable environmental characteristics, and which have a demonstrable or systematic effect on the individual’s psychological processes and/or overt behavior.” (Foxall, Goldsmith & Brown 1998: 185) The effect of the physical environment is more on the retail markets. Lightening, the size of store, crowdedness, heating etc have a deep impact on the consumer behavior and choice. In this market situation, location plays the most important part. Consumer behavior comprises of all the activities including the decision-making, act of purchasing and exchanging information. The activity of purchasing involves the buying process and its related activities. In the consumer behavior is also involved the act of some complex or semi-complex decision making processes. The complex decision making process often involves conscious thinking process which is often depended upon the certain period of time frame whereby also involved is the search process and problem solving. In the psychological perspective, consumers make the use of the conscious state of mind, which we perceive to be opposed to the unconscious state of mind. Akerlof and Dickens suggest the analysis of consumer’s behavioral function on basis of their psychological, anthropological, and sociological research. They implemented the psychological theory of cognitive dissonance for the study of the consumer choice. This theory is based on the fact that consumers can modify and have a control on what they believe to make themselves assure of what they want. On the bases of this assumption, there is a need to incorporate the processes or methods currently prevalent in the market to formulate the consumer behavior. For e.g. the role of advertisement can be formulated in the cognitive theory to provide individuals with the justifications that the goods they have bought satisfy their needs. This manipulation of the beliefs according to Akerlof and Dickens is a conscious process. (Royo 2007: 157) The studies show that inconsistency between the attitude of consumers and their behavior may discourage the cognitive models to adopt and explain about the consumer behavior to give way to adopt the search of the alternative system of explanation. There can also be different approaches to look at the consumer behavior and that is social cognitive way of theorizing. For some epistemologists, scientific development of a field depends on variety of ideas and opposes number of incompatible views that different research groups are having. (Foxall, Oliveira-Castro, James & Schrezenmaier 2007: 2) Number of institutions have also accounted for the social factors on the issue of the consumer behavior function. For e.g. Duesenberry on basis of the empirical evidence suggests that the preferences of the consumers depend on the social status. He develops his theory on the basis that despite the growth of the income, savings of the people are decreasing at every income level. (Royo 2007: 157) And the reason behind this is simple as people who have adopted the habit to sustain higher standard of living would aspire to buy more of consumer goods resulting in the more of consumption and less of savings. Roemer, an analytical Marxist also found the relationship of consumers behavior to their endogenous preferences and introduced productive forces and economic structure as the main basis for the consumer behavior. (Royo 2007: 157) He suggests that technology, institutions and ownership relations have an effect on the individual preferences and states that their present preferences are dependent on their past preferences. Sen says that consumers are rational thinkers and their preferences depend on the way they think on rational grounds. He questions individuals on the basis of “treating them as utility maximizing egoistic individuals.” (Royo 2007: 158) For Maslow, it is a theory of motivation that creates an influence on the behavior of the consumer’s choice. This theory states that consumer’s decision depends upon their necessity and their preference. Some goods have more importance for consumers than the others, and it become very important for them that their most important needs are met first. When their first level of needs are satisfied, they tend to move forward with their other needs. For Maslow, their needs arise at several levels and they are: physiological, safety, belonging, esteem and self-actualization. (Montana & Charnoy 2000: 239) Among the other factors, socio culture factors also have a great influence in the buyer’s decision for e.g. culture, it has the greatest influence on the behavior of the consumer, and can be defined as the values, beliefs and various customs as prescribed by the society. Whole of their life revolves around these beliefs and patterns defined by the society and so as their consumption pattern. Family as a unit is the biggest factor to create an environment to make the consumers to make decision of buying depending upon the needs of the whole family. It becomes the most important task for marketers to focus on their target audience to market their products. While planning their marketing strategy, they need to check which member is the decision maker. Over and above these are the economic factors, which are finally the main criteria to shape the consumer’s behavior. Economic factors in turn depend upon the capacity to consume, their saving pattern and ability to borrow. Besides, Government at various levels is the contributory factor to mould the decision of the consumers. Government policies affect the consumer’s capacity to borrow and buying power and secondly legislation passed by the Government also plays a regulating role on the types of goods and services available in the market. In the several research processes, the main central focus is on attitude. The various studies have developed on the various concepts for the persuasion of the consumers. Among these theories, one of them is the theory of the reasoned action. The studies found that this theory holds true under certain conditions and behaviors. Blair Sheppard, Jon Hartwick and Paul Warshaw found that consumers have to face variety of goods and excessive amount of information. For the consumers, the making of the choice between the different stores, brands, products, models, colors, sizes etc create a very complex situation for them. While we examine the theory of reasoned action, it is very important to understand that what exactly happens with the consumers when they are forced to choose between different alternatives that may arise from their own attitudes or beliefs. They said that “Many of the attributes and consequences associated with various alternatives in the choice set are apt to be quite similar, the attitudes and subjective norms toward each of the alternatives also are likely to be similar.” (Sheppard, Hartwick & Warshaw 1988: 326) For e.g. if an individual thinks that buying a package of Oscar Mayer hot dogs would be a good experience, then that individual could think on similar lines while buying same product for other brands like Ball Park or Hebrew National hot dogs. (Sheppard, Hartwick & Warshaw1988: 326) How this theory of reasoned action is helpful can be illustrated by the following example and research conducted. In the year 1999, American Dietetic Association wanted to find out what the factors would determine the milk consumption or avoidance pattern among women. For this, researchers made the use the Fishbein’s and Ajzen’s model of the theory of reasoned action to help them in their search and findings. It was found that the theory of reasoned actions had been a great success in explaining the behavior of the individuals like the component of the fat and salt intake of the consumers. (Brewer, Blake, Rankin & Douglass, 1999: 39) The American Dietetic Association was able to find that by using this theory they could make exact predictions regarding the beliefs and attitudes women have towards the different types of milk. They were also able to decide how and what kind of evaluations they conducted on which milk to drink. However, there was only one drawback in this theory and it was the inability to provide a framework for making assessments on the demographic information. (Brewer, Blake, Rankin & Douglass, 1999: 43) According to the Theory of Reasoned Action, behavior of the person depends upon his intention or in other words his ardent desire to perform this particular behavior or action. This intention in turn depends on the motive of his attitude towards that behavior and subjective norm. It is said that, “Intention is the cognitive representation of a person’s readiness to perform a given behavior, and it is considered to be the immediate antecedent of behavior”. (University of Twente 2004: Online) The intention depends on three things: “their attitude toward the specific behavior, their subjective norms and their perceived behavioral control”. (University of Twente 2004: Online) This theory states that only certain particular attitudes while building up the behavior can in turn finally analyze that behavior. Besides performing measurement of the attitudes toward the behavior, there is a need for us also to measure the people’s subjective norms. To know someone’s intentions and these beliefs can be most important as knowing the attitude of the person. Lastly, people’s intentions are influenced by the perceptions consumers make on their behavior. A general rule, implies here is, “the more is the perceived control the stronger should the person’s intention to perform the behavior in question.”(University of Twente 2004: Online) Overall, it is quite true that Fishbein and Ajzeben’s theory of reasoned action has been held by the theorists since last many years and this theory can help the advertisers to understand the relationship between attitudes, beliefs, norms and behaviors of the consumers. But this theory cannot be used in case where the personality and demographic variables are taken into account. This theory could be applied only in judging the behaviors, which are under the person’s volitional control, and is based on the assumption that all human beings are rational and they make decisions based on the variable information. To study the behavior pattern at the international level, necessity is felt to develop the basic international consumer model. This model is designed to focus on the interaction of the major elements in the aggregate consumer behavior of the international market. (Samli 1995: 58)The aim of this model is to make the researcher base their assumptions on the environment factors and firms policies for comparing with marketing trends, dealing of a consumer behavior in aggregate terms, making use of both the quantitative and qualitative factors in an understandable way. Further, this model analyze and compare international market and allow the marketer for making the comparison with world market goods. (Samli 1995: 58), The International consumer model is designed to take into the account “perception, memories, experience, personality, income attitudes, life style, expectations and education” (Samli 1995: 58) and various other aspects. The model is scored on the different factors and comparing different scores in the market. With many of the external variables, it is possible to make predictions of the consumer behavior in the society. These variables are important, detectable, and exclusive. (Samli 1995: 61) After several decades of decision, research posited the view that the “level of elaboration is a crucial aspect of consumer decision making. The decision making process is qualitatively different depending on whether the consumers analyze the available information in a deep or a shallow way?” (Dewitte, Pandelaere, Briers & Warlop Online: 2) Several studies conducted have shown the point that “there is a prevalence of shallow processing under concurrent cognitive load. This theory is based on the assumption that consumers remove their default level of elaboration when the load is removed”. (Dewitte, Pandelaere, Briers & Warlop Online: 2) The market of the particular group is always striving to generate an influence over the choice of the consumers. The various strategies are adopted to lure the consumers towards buying their products. Though the marketers cannot directly force the consumers to buy, yet they adopt the strategies to manipulate their thoughts and behaviors to buy their products. Some of the most important marketing strategy is the advertisements. Media is the best medium to make the consumers realize the usage of their products and services to their target audience. Theory of Reasoned Action could be directly made applicable in the advertisements. The motive of the different advertisements are different, some of advertisers need to create an influence over the individuals on emotional level whereas other advertisers try to rationally lead individuals to the purchase of a product. The Theory of Reasoned Action can be applied to advertising field that tries to attract individuals in a rational manner by giving relevant information of product and asserting on the positive product features in advertising. Advertisers decision power is based on the assumptions that the individuals are active receptors of any information what so ever. The information about the product they have obtained and evaluated is integrated with the rest of the information. Advertisers strive to give information to the individual to make the rational decision. The process of persuasion calls their target audience for attention, enables them to comprehend their products, form their intention and finally make them change their behavioral patterns towards their goods. Advertisers make their consumers have a much stronger belief and the desired attribute towards their product. They make assumptions and move ahead by providing information to the readers and helps them to make rational decisions. According to Fishben, and Ajzen, “individuals perceive brands as a bundle of attributes. An individual’s overall attitude toward the brand is determined by a consumer’s evaluative response or attitude toward brand attributes and a subjective estimation of the probability that the brand actually has the attribute.” (Pechmann & Stewart 1989: 35) The attributes adopted by the advertisers are that which can appeal to the individuals in rational manner and forge a positive attitude. Yet there are several other modes of influencing consumers i.e. through mouth-to-mouth spread of products. It is a tendency on the part of the men to exaggerate and say. In this case too, the people exaggerate to make their products reach their target audience. He is taught to mould their behavior according to the changes made. The Theory of Reasoned Action of Fishbein and Ajzen stresses that cultivating individual’s intense desire is the best way to judge the behavior, attitude and subjective norm believed by consumers. As the world is changing and the technological advancement taking place so is the change in the consumers tastes and preferences. Firms develop various strategies meeting the demands of this change and policies are framed keeping in mind both the satisfaction level of consumers as well as the profit. Various theories have been adopted and formulated to understand the consumers choice, its tastes and preferences. Only those products are brought in the market and to the extent where the satisfaction level of the consumers and profit of the firms reaches equilibrium level. Reference List Brewer, J., Blake, A., Douglas, L. 1999. Theory of reasoned action predicts milk consumption in women. Journal of the American Dietetic Association, 99(1): 39-44 Dewitte, S., Pandelaere, M. Briers, B. & Warlop, L. Consumer load has negative after effects on consumer decision making. 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