Consumer Buying Behavior : Post Purchase Dissonance And Factors Affecting Such A Behavior Essay

This phenomenon is caused by the leading role of vision in the emergence of the picture. Our brain does not like contradictions very much, and that is why

His theory asserts people have different views about the world around them; however, when these cognitions clash, an inconsistency arises which results in a state known as cognitive dissonance. People are then motivated to reduce the disharmony by changing their attitudes, beliefs, and behaviors or justify and rationalize them. His theory continues to be essential in psychology, communication, and other areas of theoretical study. Cognitive dissonance addresses the inescapable human propensity to rationalize contradictory thoughts. The theory indicates a state of mind involving an individual’s conflicting attitudes, beliefs, and behaviors. Dissonance creates a feeling of disharmony possibly leading to a change in an individual’s attitudes, beliefs, or behaviors in order to decrease the disharmony and restore a balance of harmony. Therefore, people have an internal drive to keep their attitudes, beliefs, and behavior in harmony in order to keep from experiencing

Hoyer, W. D., MacInnis, D. J., & Pieters, R. (2012). Consumer Behavior, 6e, 6th Edition.

The fundamental factors that were identified to develop the psychological processes include perception, learning, memory, thinking, emotion and motivation (Sternberg 1996). Following the structure of the SOR model, Howard first (1969) proposed the consumer decision-making model (Richarme, M., 2005), which was further developed to be the ‘Theory of Buyer Behaviour’ (Howard et al., 1973). The model considered environment stimulus as variables impacting consumes, and was triggered from various sources. These inputs included core elements of products such as price, quality that the buyer truly confronts (Loudon et al., 1993) as well as symbolic stimuli resulted from advertising. Besides, social stimuli including family, peer and other reference groups also influence consumers before entering the decision process (Foxall 1990). In contrast, Engel et al (1995) did not focus on environmental factors, but paid more attention to the hypothetical construction of the decision process that was the main organism being influenced by inputs. The entire organism was structured around a seven-point decision process: need recognition followed by an internally and externally information search, the evaluation of alternatives, purchase, post purchase reflection and disposal. Aligning with Howard (1973), mainly two factors significantly affected these decisions. First, market stimuli affected consumer’s information process which was

After reading the article by Robert Puff, there are examples of both cognitive behavioral theory and conflict management. First, cognitive behavioral theory is the idea that cognition, emotion, and behavior all interface with each other which is displayed in the article through a patient named Felicia. One night, Felicia’s husband made a wounding comment regarding her weight. After, her husband immediately apologized feeling extremely culpable for his damaging words towards his wife. Consequently, Felicia self esteem was severely damaged. Sadly, Felicia continued to allow the comment to linger in her mind for a decade without overcoming it for herself. In result, the comment affected how Felicia thought, felt, and acted which related back to

First, let me explain what cognitive dissonance means. This happens when a person has inconsistent thoughts, actions, and or attitudes. It usually happens when 2 or more ideas in your head contradict each other, causing an uncomfortable reaction within ones self. People then either ignore things that oppose this mental stress or engage it by changing their actions to confirm with their thoughts, or just the exact opposite. This is done in order to gain reassurance. Cognitive dissonance happens quite often within the minds of people.

Cognitive Dissonance or mental stress which is primarily caused by contradictory beliefs, can be a common part of some peoples life’s however we are psychologically motivated to avoid situations which cause mental stress. This paper will discuss a situation and the behavior using attribution theory, the reciprocal relationship between behavior and attitudes as well as how cognitive dissonance theory could be used to rationalize the behavior.

When it comes to cognitive dissonance and how it creates attitude change it all comes about because of cognitive dissonance having a lot to do with emotional turbulences, with this it causes people to change their attitudes. This happens because people change their attitudes just to get over the conflict that results from cognitive dissonance. The fact of the matter is that if someone has a negative attitude about something, his or her attitude about the given situation and sometime even feels that he or she enjoys it just so they can feel good. At the end of the day cognitive dissonance is a very powerful motivation tool and in turn it can be used to change someone attitude. It is not used in mass advertising because cognitive dissonance can

The focus of this paper is to determine how cognitive dissonance affects our decisions, and how one can reduce the impacts of cognitive dissonance. Cognitive dissonance is a phenomenon which occurs when two cognitions are conflicting. In choosing one option over the other, people tend to question if they made the right decision. There are several strategies to resolve cognitive dissonance. Altering the conflicting cognition, altering the importance of the conflicting cognition and adding additional positive cognitions to outweigh the conflicting ones are ways to resolve cognitive dissonance. The results of these dissonance reduction strategies all typically result in a stronger attribution with the option that was chosen, and the unchosen alternative is more negatively attributed.

Solomon, M. (2011). Consumer Behavior: Buying, Having, and Being. 9th edition. Prentice Hall. 1-51. Retrieved from

The term dissonance refers to when one cognitive element is inconsistent with another cognitive element according to the lecture notes of Professor Soreno. Cognitive elements can be categorized in four groups called beliefs, attitudes, values, and perceptions of behavior. Beliefs can be defined as a perception that something exists or not. This perception can range from a central or peripheral type of belief. The more central a belief is, the harder it is to change that belief. An attitude describes the positive or negative feelings we have toward people, things, or ideas. Values are beliefs that are so important to a person, that they practically guide a person’s life. There are two types of values, instrumental and

Arbitrary coherence refers to a situation in which consumers’ judgment is initially influenced by often random anchors.

14) The attitudes and behavior patterns of consumers making a purchasing decision are part of the

There are several desirable alternatives. Today‟s car buyer, for example, has an abundance of choices among similar attractive models. In fact, research indicates that those consumers who experience greater difficulty in making purchase decisions, or who consider a wider range of store and brand options, are more likely to experience greater magnitudes of postpurchase dissonance.

Once there is the decision to consume or purchase good s or services the common factor then becomes the need for that product which is at times evaluated based on attainability and price. In many situations if consumers are not motivated by the need to purchase then the possibility lies that they will not purchase. There may be different justifications that consumers internalize when making the decision to purchase a particular product at its given price. Different decisions supports the need to purchase a product such as