Changing consumer attitudes in steady markets

Dall'Olmo Riley, F (1995) Changing consumer attitudes in steady markets. Doctoral thesis, University of London: London Business School.

Abstract

The thesis studies cross-sectional and longitudinal relationships between consumer attitudes towards brands and their purchase behaviour, both at the aggregate and at the individual level. Little is known about how changes in the one relate to changes in the other. At the cross-sectional level we examine the relationship between attitudinal responses, purchase intentions, and advertising recall and various measures of past, current and future brand purchasing. Our empirical results on US data confirm previous findings in the UK that the level of our various attitudinal and purchase behaviour measures are mostly determined by and predictable from the size of the brand in terms of its market share, rather than by any more specific properties of the brand itself. At the longitudinal level, consistent with very limited previous research, we find that while attitudinal measures and buying behaviour appear stable over time when examined at the aggregate level, individuals change their expressed opinion greatly between interviews: on average only 50% of consumers give identical responses. The thesis largely explains this "volatility" of attitudinal responses at the individual level by means of a relationship with the response level (Double Jeopardy). We quantify such relationship in a simple and generalisable form. Finally, we relate individual changes in attitudes to individual changes in brand usage. The thesis contributes to consumer behaviour research also in terms of the scope of the measures employed, the variables examined, and the product fields surveyed. Furthermore, the research increases the scant knowledge concerning individual attitude variations over time, also in terms of interpretation and quantification.