Positive Attitudes

Apple Computer uses focused differentiation to help sell its computers to a narrow target market of graphic designers and educators rather than the general population of computer users. Apple’s innovation on the ITunes store together with the widespread use of the IPod. The corporate strategy is focused on being a market disrupter, and in turn a market maker, by focusing relentlessly on the customer experience.

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

35. Beliefs may help shape a consumer's attitudes but don't necessarily involve any liking or disliking.

Consumer perception applies the concept of sensory perception to marketing and advertising. Just as sensory perception relates to how humans perceive and process sensory stimuli through their five senses, consumer perception pertains to how individuals form opinions about companies and the merchandise they offer through the purchases they make. Merchants apply consumer perception theory to determine how their customers perceive them. They also use consumer perception theory to develop marketing and advertising strategies intended to retain current customers -- and attract new ones. Psychologist Daryl Bem originally developed this theory of attitude formation in the late 1960’s and early 1970’s when he argued that people sometimes analyze their

Apple implemented the marketing concept by focusing on customers’ needs through imagination, design, and innovation creating an emotional brand for its customers. Even though Apple is a technological company it takes a humanistic approach to satisfying the needs of its customers far better than the competition.

Apple’s branding strategy focuses mainly on emotions. It centers on a person’s lifestyle, imagination, his passion, hopes, dreams and aspiration, and lastly empowering the people through technology. The Apple brand personality emphasizes on making people’s lives easier and it is a company with a genuine connection with its customers. Apple try’s to brand the business around customers; every aspect of the customer experience is relevant. Every contact with the customer must be a reinforcement of the brand’s values.The brand is currently expanding by opening retail stores in high-end shopping districts in major cities around the world. The brand provides expert staff to selected stores; it has formed alliances with other companies to distribute its products (like with HP for example, who pre-loaded iTunes into its PC’s and laptops). The brand has also increased its accessibility through the expansion of its online stores.Through its retail stores, Apple is able to offer customers a direct

The consumer arrives at attitudes toward different brands through some evaluation procedure. How consumers go about evaluating purchase alternatives depends on the individual consume and the specific buying situation. In some cases, consumers use careful calculations and logical thinking. At other times, the same consumers do little or no evaluating; instead they buy on impulse and rely on intuition. Sometimes consumer makes buying decisions on their own; sometimes they turn to friends, consumer guides, or salespeople for buying advice.

The secondary market targets high school, college, and graduate students. For this market, it seems that the once popular iPod is now being replaced with the iPhone (1). We will examine the marketing mix: product, price, promotion, and place, to see if Apple is delivering the intended value to target customers. When researching the company’s environment, we will study the economic, political, cultural, technological, and natural forces in the company’s microenvironment (71). By researching all these aspects, we will get a better idea of how Apple continues to grow and market itself into a prosperous technological company. Apple’s iPhone interests us because it seems to be the cell phone that has the latest technical advancements, and can do more than just the average cell phone. By studying this company’s market perspective, we can get a better understanding of how Apple can continue to have the highest sales in the cell phone market.

Leon G. Schiffman and Joseph L Wisenblit. (2015). consumer behavior eleventh edition. United States of America : Pearson Education.

Purchase intention is constructed from consumers’ attitudes and external factors, where attitudes are multiplex consisting of three elements which are cognitive component or knowledge, affective component or emotion, and conative component motivating consumers toward behaviour or response (Adcock et al., 2001). Purchase intention is a significant factor for predicting consumer behaviour (Fishbein and Ajzen, 1975). Also, purchase it can measure the possibility of consumers’ purchases. The level of consumers’ willingness to buy products directly depends on their purchase intention (Schiffman and Kanuk, 2000). Thus, it is an important concept in marketing. Khan et al. (2012) stated that consumers consider many different criteria when they would like to buy products, such as price, quality, product features, brand and convenience. According to previous research, it is found that purchase intention has many different definitions.

Advertising is a persuasive communication attempt to change or reinforce one’s prior attitude that is predictable of future behavior. We are not born with the attitudes for which we hold toward various things in our environment. Instead, we learn our feelings of favorability or unfavorability through information about the object through advertising or direct experience with the object, or some combination of the two. Furthermore, the main aim of advertising is to ‘persuade’ to consumer in order to generate new markets for production.

Consumption is a process of acquiring, using and disposing of goods and services. Emotions play a very large role in consumer behavior. This behavior and emotions are affected and created by the society and the culture in which the consumer lives. For example, an American may approach the purchase of a costly car with relatively less pressure than a person in a developing country where a car could be a high unaffordable luxury. The customer will comprehend brands, offers and the meaning of the product based on the understanding that he or she has of similar brands and their experience by analogy or by hearsay from peers and form an opinion. For example a new soft drink from Pepsi may not be very informative in its advertisement but that it is from the stable of PepsiCo makes the users of Pepsi brands take it in without much research. Such an opinion is not based mostly on the complete set of facts. Where there are many alternatives or the information is scarce the customer has to make a lot of effort or 'high effort' to reach a decision and such a situation could be a turnoff. On the other hand the customer may not be inclined to devolve deep into facts in case where the brand value is established and may make a decision on little or even sometimes no information. (Hoyer;

Consumer Mood and Advertising Responses. In Advances in Consumer Research Volume 16, eds. Thomas K. Srull, Advances in Consumer Research Volume 16 : Association for Consumer Research, Pages: 485-491.

An attitude may be defined as a feeling of favorableness or unfavorableness that an individual has towards an object (be it a person, thing or situation). A wider definition of attitude sees it as “an enduring organization of motivational, emotional, perceptual and cognitive processes with respect to some aspect of our environment” (Hawkins, Best and Coney, 2004). More specifically, “attitude refers to knowledge and positive or negative feelings about an object or activity” (Pride and Ferrell, 1991). The study of consumer attitudes is exceedingly imperative for a marketer because an individual with a positive attitude towards a product/service offering is more prone to make a purchase. In terms of consumer behavior, an attitude is reflective of a consistent favorable or unfavorable feeling that a consumer or a prospect forms as a result of an evaluation about an object; the object being, a product/service offering, brand, price, store and dealer, salesperson, advertisement, promotion etc.