Consumer Attitude

Consumer Attitudes Revisited: A Review of Attitude Theory in Marketing Researchijmr_
299 431..451431..451
Evmorfia Argyriou and T.C. Melewar1
Department of Management, King’s College, University of London, London Franklin-Wilkins Building, 150
Stamford Street, London SE1 9NH, UK, and 1Brunel Business School, Brunel University West London, Uxbridge,
Middlesex UB8 3PH,UK
Corresponding author email: [e-mail]
Few concepts in the marketing literature have proliferated like the concept of attitude.
However, a closer look at studies investigating attitudes as consumers’ responses to marketing efforts reveals a considerable diversity in perspectives about the concept of attitude and its formation. Attitudes are considered either relatively stable object– associations, or temporarily constructed evaluations, which are formed through memory (cognitive)-based information processing or contextual and affect-based information processing. The current paper discusses and organizes these different theoretical viewpoints on what attitudes are and how they are formed. By approaching the topic through an integrative lens, the paper provides a solid conceptual foundation and roadmap for marketing researchers.
Introduction
Marketing researchers and managers alike rely heavily on attitudinal surveys to estimate people’s preferential responses to a range of marketing objects, such as products, brands and advertisements
(Grewal et al. 2004; Lee and Labroo 2004; Pieters et al. 2010), retail sites (Yoo et al. 1998), websites
(Chen and Wells 1999; Schlosser 2003b) and Web commercials (Bruner and Kumar 2000; Stevenson et al. 2000). As a result, understanding the concept of attitude and the process of attitude formation is important to researchers and managers interested in altering consumers’ evaluation of marketing objects in order to influence their preferences and tendencies to engage in particular behaviour.
However, the marketing

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