Beliefs and Attitudes
Through our daily activities, we build beliefs and attitudes that in turn influence our buying behavior.
A consumer's beliefs are descriptive thoughts that they have about something, while attitudes are a consumer's "relatively" consistent evaluations, feelings, and tendencies toward an object or idea. Attitudes put people into specific frames of mind, and help to move them towards or away from certain products and brands. Unfortunately attitudes can be very difficult to change. Attitudes are a part of a consumer's learned behavior patterns. Changing a consumer's attitudes and beliefs usually will require us try to change many other perceptions and attitudes in other areas of the consumer's mind. Often it is easier to position a product into an existing attitude, than to fight against them and try to change them.
Marketers need to understand these beliefs and attitudes in order to best position their messaging in front of the target consumer. If we believe some of the target consumer's beliefs and attitudes are wrong about us, thereby preventing sales, then we can understand how to launch focused messaging campaigns to change beliefs about our products and brands.