Consumer’s Referent-Seeking Behaviour: The Antecedence and Motivational Factors Dissertation

Introduction

When we speak of humans having “behaviours” it means that humans have certain dispositional tendencies that, when activated, give rise to behavioural experience. Thus people have a dispositional tendency for the behaviour of “excitement, ” but the behavioural experience of excitement has to be aroused if it is to be meaningful in people’s lives. Hence there are behaviours as latent dispositions to have certain types of experience and behaviours as the experiences themselves that affect people’s behaviour. Behaviours as dispositional tendencies are part of a person’s makeup, while behaviours as experiences are apt to be short-lived. In this book we are not concerned so much with behaviours as dispositions; we focus on behaviours as experiences.

Whenever consumers are encouraged to have high expectations about a product, they are concerned when such expectations are not fulfilled hence the anger accompanying disappointment. If the anger is unexpressed, resentment can fester. A mental state can be pleasant (e.g., joy) or unpleasant (e.g., fear). These alternative states are the hedonic tone of behaviour. On the other hand, behavioural bodily processes are states of arousal, from calm to excite.

If we are to really understand the consumer’s behaviour, the object of the behaviour needs to be identified and analyzed to establish what attribute, characteristic, or property of the object is responsible for the arousal of behaviour. Consumer behaviour arises from highly negative or positive appraisals. We generally think of appraisals as highly cognitive, that is, as being thought generated and based on beliefs and wants. But there is a preconscious processing of inputs to the mind that screens for what interests and concerns us. If there is something that concerns us, there is an immediate nonconscious appraisal that gives rise to a “reflex” behaviour.

The process is perception behavioural experience, with no conscious cognition in between. If nothing in the processing of inputs concerns us, that is, does not relate in any way to what we value, there is nothing to activate the behaviours.

Behaviours are associated with autonomic physiological activity experienced (if at all) as feelings. It is typically assumed that having highly unpleasant or pleasant feelings involve high arousal. This need not be so, in that boredom, for example, can be very unpleasant when arousal is low. It may be, however, that for a behaviour to be motivating there must be high arousal accompanied by high pleasantness or unpleasantness. Although we talk of feeling happy, angry, guilty, embarrassed, frightened, or sad, we can have feelings of pain, nausea, and so on without these things being in any way connected to the behaviours. “Feelings” include bodily feelings, like feelings of stress, and “feelings toward, ” like the warm feelings toward the object of love.

Literature Review

The output of a highly positive or negative appraisal always gives rise to “feelings toward” the object of concern. A consumer’s highly positive appraisal of a product is accompanied by a positive feeling toward the product. Without feelings toward the object, there would be no behaviour. When it is argued that behaviours need not involve feelings, the reference is typically to bodily feelings and not “feelings toward” the object of the behaviour. Of course, people are not always conscious of either their bodily feelings or “feeling towards. ” Thus, as Goldie (2000) says, we can be afraid without being reflectively conscious at the time of our thoughts or feelings.

A traditional view is to treat behaviour as felt experience. Many writers talk about the need for marketers to create the right customer experience. This can be another way of discussing (behavioural) experiences. This has the advantage of being less abstract and more reality-focused than merely talking about behaviours and behavioural reactions. Barlow and Maul (2000) talk of “experience providers” providing behavioural value which they define as the monetary worth of feelings when customers experience an organization’s product/services positively. However, there is always a need to fall back on behavioural concepts and what we know about behaviour if explanatory depth is to be achieved.

Behaviours give rise to a tendency to action. The feeling of anger gives rise to a tendency to aggression, though in the case of sadness the behaviour may simply be expressive, as in an expression of grief. Behaviours express themselves in involuntary facial displays and other physiological expressions like body posture. Thus an appraisal giving rise to fear can register on the face before the conscious mind can act to control the reaction. Hence we speak of “reading” someone’s face, and if we are political animals we need to acquire considerable expertise in this.

The most significant division in the behaviours is that between the universal, biologically driven behaviours of fear, anger, surprise, disgust, and sadness and the higher cognitive, culturally molded behaviours such as embarrassment, guilt, pride, and envy. There are a number of distinct approaches to conceptualizing and studying the behaviours that reflect this basic division, but a discussion of these approaches is not necessary for our purposes. One debate, though, is important for what we discuss later. In psychology and the consumer behaviour literature, there is debate about the primacy of affect over cognition versus that of cognition over affect.

Zajonc (1980) argues for the primacy of affect over cognition. By this he means that we experience behaviours before any conscious appraisal of the triggering stimuli has occurred, though beliefs about the triggering stimuli may happen in parallel with, or even as a direct result of, the behaviour arising. Behaviour on this view can arise through a simple reflex process. The work of neurologists like Damasio and LeDoux demonstrates that the initial appraisal of things that are tied to our values or core concerns is nonconscious and may be at variance with the more reflective (conscious) appraisal that occurs subsequently.

Damasio (1994) claims is that if a person is unable to attach positive or negative behaviours to his or her mental representations of proposed courses of action, then there can be no behavioural appraisal of the possible courses of action. Without such behavioural appraisal, people cannot decide what most concerns them. As a result there is an inability to reach a decision in serious cases. The idea that there is pure rational thought devoid of feeling is a myth. It is in fact commonly an insult to suggest that someone is this rational; one politician called another, to insult him, “a desiccated calculating machine. ” The political consultant Roger

Ailes dismissed Michael Dukakis as “that little computer heart” who “isn’t going to know what hit him. ” Behind all this rhetoric is the same idea, the stigmatization of the unfeeling rationalist. This is not surprising, as our rational economic models tend to focus on technical and economic criteria, which, when deployed exclusively in the choice of policy, can alienate people.

One argument of those stressing the primacy of affect is that in our evolutionary past, conscious appraisal came too late for appropriate action; better first a nonconscious appraisal to fight or flight. From a marketing point of view, this idea coheres with the old adage that “First impressions count, ” in that consumers, in the absence of other information in the immediate view, are apt to go along with a first “gut” reaction. What immediately resonates with the consumer behaviourally has a big impact on subsequent action. Popular expressions evoke this kind of unexamined visceral response, as in phrases such as “kneejerk reaction” or “rush of blood. ” Thus consumers can be strongly swayed by brand image or associated factors.

Every conscious mental state has a qualitative character that we refer to as mood. We are always in a mood that is pleasurable or unpleasurable to some degree. It may be that bad moods relate to their being too little positive reinforcement in a person’s current life and too many punishments. In any case, moods are distinguished from behaviours proper by not being tied to any specific object. But, as Goldie (2000) says, this distinction is not watertight, in that behaviours need not be directed at objects that are completely specific (we can be angry just at people generally) while there is always a sense of a mood having a general objective like the state of the world at large.

Moods manifest themselves in positive or negative feelings that are tied to health, personality, or perceived quality of life. Moods can also relate to the behaviours proper, as in the aftermath of an behavioural incident such as the failure to secure a loan. A mood on this basis is the mind’s judgment on the recent past. For Goldie, behaviour can bubble up and down within a mood, while an behaviour can involve characteristics that are non-object specific.

People generally can “feel down” or “feel good” as a result of happenings in the world around them. This represents the national mood. People feel elated when the national soccer team wins an international match or depressed when their team has lost. An elated mood of calm-energy is an optimistic mood, which is good for business. Consumers, as socially involved individuals, are deeply influenced by the prevailing social climate. Marketers recognize the phenomenon and talk about the national mood being, say, for or against conspicuous consumption. Moods do change, though. Writing early in the nineteenth century, Toqueville describes an American elite embarrassed by the ostentation of material display; in the “Gilded Age, ” sixty years later, many were only too eager to embrace a materialistic vulgarity.

The problem lies in anticipating changes in national mood, since a change in mood affects everything from the buying of equities to the buying of houses and washing machines. Thayer would argue that we should be interested in national events that are likely to produce a move toward a tense-tiredness state or toward a calm-energy state, since these are the polar extremes and so are more likely to influence behaviour. Artists sensitive to national moods express the long-term changes.

Whenever the mind is not fully absorbed, consciousness is no longer focused and ordered. Under such conditions the mind falls into dwelling on the unpleasant, with a negative mood developing. Csikszentmihalyi argues that humans have a need to keep consciousness in an ordered state, and this experiential need to keep consciousness fully active is what influences a good deal of consumer behaviour. 45 Sometimes it does not matter what we are shopping for the point is to shop for anything, regardless, as consuming is one way to respond to the void in consciousness when there is nothing else to do.

To have a sentiment toward a brand or product is to have a strong positive feeling of liking for that brand. Strong brand loyalty involves behavioural sentiment. Having a choice makes for the expression of loyalty, as it provides an opportunity to be against alternatives disliked. If the product has attributes that are unique and of central importance to the consumer, together with risks attached to buying, the product is termed a “high-involvement product, ” as being most likely to engage the consumer in deliberations when choosing. This is because high-involvement products are those that generate the most consumer concern.

Trust and sentiment are the ingredients of brand loyalty. In contrast to moods (but in line with behaviours), sentiments are not persistent conscious states but are dormant until aroused by the object of the sentiment. Behavioural sentiment ties into behavioural memory, in that memories have sentimental content. Every firm catering to the consumer should seek to develop an behavioural sentiment for the firm’s brand by fixing it in the consumer’s memory as part of a valued way of life. It is the vestiges of behavioural sentiment that allow the successful resurrection of old brand names, such as the revival of the name Buggatti.

It is ignorance of the behavioural sentiment that can attach to eminent brand names that leads to many such brands being dismissed as worthless assets. The behaviour still attached to the name Pan Am is not simply that arising from the Lockerbie air bomb atrocity.

Choices in real life are always the result of both individual preferences and situational pressures. This is one reason why it is easier to explain consumer behaviour after the event than to predict it in the first place. The survey method has the additional limitation of being ill equipped to measure variation across contexts; yet the researcher often needs to appraise responses in contrasting situations. Contexts and background are important. This is why Underhill criticizes store designers for skimping on dressing rooms which operate as an effective selling tool by providing an attractive background.

One prediction that can be made is that behavioural experiences will be the ones remembered. This is why we may act purely to savour behavioural experience. Entertainment is the classical example, but shopping for something new and exciting is an behavioural experience in itself. Impressionist painters focus attention on the experiences they have had with objects rather than on the objects themselves, and it is this that resonates with audiences. And behavioural experiences do influence actions.

Orthodox social psychology has an interest in folk psychology and studies it under the general label of social cognition. It claims people make inferences not just about the reasons or causes of behaviour but also about another’s personality. We agree that knowledge of a person’s character in the circumstances can be important for prediction. But in folk psychology, it is commonly argued that certain traits seem “to go together. ” This gives rise to a tendency to ascribe another’s actions to a character trait rather than circumstances.

Cognitive psychologists tend to be supportive of the theory-theory view of folk psychology because it fits their paradigm of internally represented knowledge structures, typically a body of rules or propositions. But Goldman (1995) points out that the knowledge-rich procedures in cognitive psychology’s information-processing approach do not constitute the only paradigm, since cognitive science also posits knowledge-poor procedures, as when the mental processes posited are simply heuristics (rules of thumb). The simulation approach fits this knowledge-poor paradigm very well. Hence cognitive psychology supports both the theory-theory view and the simulation view.

The question of the nature of folk psychology cannot be resolved by a priori reasoning. There is a need for empirical investigation, and development psychologists have taken a lead in this, though the evidence so far is equivocal. Thus Gopnick and Wellman (1995) show that children over the age of five answer action questions in terms of wants and beliefs, not in terms of fears, fantasies, pains, and sensations, as we would expect if the simulation approach was valid.

And Perner and Howes conclude, from their studies, that the developmental evidence suggests that it is unlikely that children come to understand mental concepts like wants and beliefs by means of simulation but that these concepts are acquired by “the formation of the prerequisite mental representations. ” On the other hand, Harris argues that children improve their grasp of folk psychology by means of a simulation process.

While agreeing that we routinely make attributions to others of beliefs, desires, behaviours, and other mental concepts, Harris argues that this does not imply any use of theory about the relationships between mental states themselves and mental states and action. While he also agrees that simulation could not anticipate that “position effect” would influence the consumer’s brand choice, he claims that this is because this influence is not governed by the decision-making process but arises through the right visual field exerting an unconscious dominance over the motor system.

Referent-seeking behaviour

It is argued on occasion that consumers live in a world of wishes and imaginings. For some postmodernists, ads that evoke images of satisfaction aim at filling the consumer’s mind with pure fantasy to stimulate buying in line with the fantasy. Baudrillard argues that our situation today is one of hyper reality, where distinctions are dissolved between objects and their representations, so we are left with only simulacra that refer to nothing but themselves.

For Baudrillard, a simulacrum is a copy of a copy for which there is no original. In the world of hyper reality, the only reality is TV ads and other signifiers, so media images become the reality, and any distinction between the real world and that of the pervasive media becomes eroded. Baudrillard argues that the use-value and exchange-value of products has given way to “sign-value, ” where products become primarily symbols to be consumed and exhibited. Thus, for example, the consumer, through designer labels, consumes the symbols of power, status, and prestige. Baudrillard sees consumer society as a constellation of sign values that constitute a hierarchy of prestige.

He claims that the distinction between reality and unreality, as a consequence, has been eradicated. There is a breakdown of the distinction between the real and the imaginary, as the consumerist society, and the technology that goes with it, creates its own reality for marketing purposes. Rejecting any stable relationship between the signifier (e.g., product) and the signified (symbols of prestige), signs do not have a distinct referent to any reality. There remains only simulacra, as signs (e.g., in ads) lose contact with the things signified. Consumers are said to create their own reality. The world of the consumer is seen as composed of pure simulacra, or the hyper real, where just the signs themselves constitute the realm of experience. In a situation of strong hyper reality, the consumer is unable to separate reality from illusion.

On the other hand, in a situation of weak hyper reality, the consumer separates the two but prefers to remain with the illusion, with no distinction between the real and the representation. Poster claims that ads tend to mirror the fantasies of social groups, so the academic analysis of consumption needs to shift from the analysis of technical/economic factors to the linguistic categories of sign and signifiers. As TV controls the context of its message, even heroes can be created of villains.

We have no difficulty in seeing the role of fantasy in the life of the consumer. Women’s magazines (and many men’s) are all about fantasy and escapism. However, it is doubtful that readers are unable to separate the reality from the fantasy or that they read these magazines for their correspondence to the reality. If people could not distinguish between, say, the science fiction fantasies in films and reality, they would quickly find that life outside the cinema was impossible. And advertisers are not as influential as critics think, even among school children. There are always rival sources of information.

Studies discussed by The Economist (January 6, 2001, p. 65) found that children as young as six years of age understood the purpose of commercials and distinguished them from entertainment, while fantasy was distinguished from reality.

Many would agree that modern media can help to form as well as to mirror realities, but this does not result in a situation in which sign or image is everything. It cannot all be done with mirrors. In addition, as Velleman makes clear, our imaginings are typically accompanied by countervailing beliefs, embodying knowledge of the facts one is imagining to be otherwise. These countervailing beliefs are in constant competition with imaginings, as is the recognition that wishes are not in the realm of the attainable. It is just not true that consumer behaviour approaches being psychotic. But, of course, fantasies and wishes can lead to self-persuasion and action that is self-deceptive. One simple example is that of top designers putting small sizes on large clothes. The customer, pleased at finding she can get into a much smaller size of dress, is behaviourally driven into purchase.

Antecedence and Motivational Factors

Behaviours are triggered by the arousal and appraisal of anything that impacts on values. Ortony, Clore, and Collins (1988) view behaviours as valenced reactions to stimuli, that is, as reactions tied to appraisals or evaluations of desirability. This is much the same as saying that behavioural arousal arises from emotive stimuli being very positively or very negatively appraised against values. Ortony, Clore, and Collins distinguish three types of emotive stimuli, viewed typically as the object of the behaviour, that is, what the behaviour is about, as follows.

Anything that boosts self-esteem adds to pride. Obtaining what is perceived as a bargain can also give rise to a sense of pride, and so can finally managing, say, to obtain the status symbol of a sports car. In addition, there can be the behaviour toward others of admiration or of reproach. Admiring others, we seek that admiration ourselves through imitative behaviour. Similarly, there is a desire to distance from those we would reproach, and they become a negative reference group in buying. Actions are thus appraised in terms of their praiseworthiness. As praiseworthiness assumes some standard for assessment purposes, it relates to achievement as against expected performance.

Aspects, properties, attributes of objects. Whenever the consumer appraises some behavioural aspect or attribute of an object, like a product, there is a “gut reaction” of like or dislike. If an object’s attributes are of concern to the consumer, there is no such thing as a neutral view but inevitably a judgment of liking or not.

Ortony et al. are obviously talking about first-level appraisals, as the consumer can be interested in the aspects, properties, or attributes of objects because they give rise to certain consequences. But Ortony et al. would rightly argue that the interest lies in the immediate reaction to consequences, actions, or aspects of objects. The more important the values against which consequences are appraised, the greater the intensity of the behaviour aroused (with “intensity” being a function of the size of the behaviour times its duration. )

Taylor focuses on belief rather than belief plus wishes (wants/desires) because she claims that wishes are reflected in the beliefs themselves. Gordon (1987) denies that this is so—on the legitimate ground that it presupposes that “desiring” is always equivalent to “believing desirable, ” which is just not so. As pointed out earlier, beliefs refer to how the world actually is, while wishes relate to how we would like the world to be. This is important for marketing.

For example, consumers desire to eat many food products that they do not believe are wholly desirable. A problem, therefore, is to ensure that customers see what they desire as also desirable, as when the candy manufacturer reduces the calories in a chocolate bar. This is at one with trying to get the consumer to buy without reservations so that there is no post purchase dissonance. Finally, Taylor’s focus on beliefs would presumably treat fantasies as perceived beliefs, though this ignores the claim that the biological function of belief is to track the truth.

When consumers experience the behaviour of pride, they feel they shine in the reflected glory of what they are proud of, because they believe that it is something esteemed in their social milieu. On the other hand, taking great pleasure in a possession does not mean necessarily taking pride in it. Something can give a great deal of pleasure (e.g., certain types of films or magazines) while one feels ashamed about the purchase. This means that one is buying with reservations. Goldie (2000) argues that pride involves “feelings toward” but not desires; this is just not so, since to take pride in something means we desire that state of affairs, as it is tied to self-esteem, in that whatever supports self-esteem is something of which to be proud. Ads that boost self-esteem are very common.

Pride is involved in securing a bargain. Obtaining what is perceived as a “bargain” is behavioural. Consumers feel pride in having come out on top beaten the system. There is also the excitement of shopping for a bargain. Similarly, when consumers obtain something that is scarce, they take pride in achievement. The more a seller suggests that something is scarce or unavailable, the more attractive it is. Some consumers will buy anything that appears to be “only one left. ” Scarcity enhances desirability. Football tickets and the new, not-yet-generally-available car can increase their perceived value by seeming to be scarce.

The recognition of scarcity as a selling point leads to the practice by retailers of ensuring that display boxes of merchandise are never actually full. As Cialdini says, opportunities are more valuable to us when their availability is limited. As he illustrates, an imperfect postage stamp would have no value were it not for stamp collectors prizing scarcity. The behavioural focus is on the loss, as we are more concerned with losses than corresponding gains.

Thus it is much more effective to emphasize the loss from not insulating a home than to say how much could saved by insulating. Cialdini points out that when an item is scarce, we want it even more if there is competition to get it; witness the battles when department stores first open their doors at sale time. What is particularly interesting is Cialdini’s claim that the joy lies not in experiencing the scarce product but in possessing it. In other words, the pleasure lies purely in possession, with the consumption experience very much secondary. This is an important caveat to the general rule stressing the consumption experience only.

When a consumer has pride in a possession, others are thought to envy him or her. Williamson claims that advertising often induces consumers to imagine themselves transformed by the product into an object of envy by others, which, in turn, justifies the buyer loving him- or herself! Veblen’s theory of the leisure class held that the desire to be wealthy arose because wealth helps one achieve esteem and the envy of others. This, of course, is not universally true. There are many wealthy people who go out of their way to avoid envy; they do not want to put themselves in a position of superiority to others and incur dislike and resentment. Elster (1999) regards envy as unique in being the only behaviour that no one wants to admit to others, as envy generates the suspicion: “I am less because I have less. ”

For Elster, the cognitive antecedent of envy includes the belief that someone has something I want, together with the counterfactual belief that it could have been me. If this is so, what does Elster make of the sayings “How I envy you” or “I’m green with envy, ” which are common usages of the term “envy”? He would argue that the meaning of any word is tied to context and that in these contexts the sayings are simply suggestive of admiration and not the behavioural state of envy. An alternative is to make a distinction between malicious and nonmalicious envy, as Goldie (2000) does. Elster is, however, right to argue that many “cut off their nose to spite their face” by excluding the most competent from holding once because of envy. On the other hand, many consumers do seek to attract nonmalicious envy: it is good for promoting a sense of self-worth.

Pride as a behaviour, as opposed to being a character trait (as when we speak of someone being a proud person), when excessive, leads to “conceit” or “arrogance. ” A conceited person, for example, contrasts his or her achievements with what he or she believes to be the typical achievement of others within his or her social milieu and feels superior as a result. If one just takes such superiority for granted without seeing any need for evidential support, one is regarded as arrogant.

An arrogant person may resent praise as implying that he or she went beyond what others might have expected him or her to accomplish. Thus we have Sartre refusing the Nobel Prize with undisguised contempt for those who felt themselves in a position to do him honour. Advertising that is directed at our conceits and arrogance takes the form of assuming that its target audience knows what constitutes the “best” and takes it for granted as their due.

To feel shame is to feel exposed to condemnation by some real or imagined audience for breaking a taboo that people feel obligated to uphold. Such taboos are tied to culture. As Elster (1999) says, the Greeks felt shame over losing any competition and felt little shame in inducing shame in others in circumstances that would not be justified today. Elster points out that in shame, the tendency is to hide or run away. With guilt, the tendency is to make repairs, though it could be argued that this only occurs if the guilt is accompanied by remorse.

The alleged difference between Western culture and that of Japan has often been stressed in terms of the difference between guilt and shame cultures. In Japan the behaviour of shame is potentially pervasive, and the radical act of hara-kiri, or ritual suicide, is associated with it. When former taboos are no longer taboos (e.g., children outside marriage), there is no longer any sense of moral obligation or shame. To feel shame is the reverse of feeling proud. However, both behaviours view the situation as it is imagined that others might view it: as circumscribed by social norms. And what lies behind all social norms?

Elster argues that social norms are enforced by the behaviour of shame. People are indoctrinated to act in accordance with the social norms of society, or at least the norms of their social milieu, or otherwise feel shame. Elster gives the key role to shame in bringing about compliance with social norms. This is important, as Lal claims that non-Western countries, like those in Asia, can import the best of American technology and practices without undermining cultural values, as has occurred in Western societies. This is because Eastern cultures like Hinduism, Islam, and Confucianism are “shame” cultures with cultural mores enforced by social norms.

If advertising wishes to remove a sense of shame in the use of a product, the strategy is to show relevant reference groups indulging in the activity without shame. This was the strategy of the American cigarette ads in the 1920s that showed cigarettes being endorsed by the most socially prominent women in Europe. But commercial advertising is not generally involved in arousing feelings of shame, though it is common in not-for-profit and public service advertising that seeks (say) to stop abortion, cruelty to animals, drug-taking, and so on. Yet commercial advertising can be slanted toward triggering shame, as when ads make ethical claims about what constitutes responsible behaviour, like taking out a life insurance policy, with the implicit suggestion that the target audience should feel shame at not having done anything so far.

The desire to avoid embarrassment through being socially maladroit lies behind many actions. Even the so-called principle of reciprocity, whereby people feel an urge to repay any form of social debt, may be based on a desire not to be embarrassed. Embarrassment is commonly exploited in commercial ads, as it is intimately tied to personal morality, respect, and a sense of integrity. Shame is the deeper and more disturbing behaviour. While a person can feel both shame and embarrassment at the same time, embarrassment is always tied to a social context. As a consequence, embarrassment requires a socially appropriate response to remove it.

It is this failure to respond appropriately that perpetuates the embarrassment, since it is essentially a failure in perceived image management. Ads recognize this by suggesting ways of responding appropriately. In contrast, shame is not localized to any particular social context. And whereas embarrassment arises from someone perceiving that an action will be judged by others as socially maladroit, in the case of shame there is the feeling that one’s self as a whole would be condemned.

Advertisers trade on the desire to avoid being judged as foolish by, say, smelling bad or wearing the wrong clothes. Entire industries have arisen to alleviate embarrassment that advertising has done much to arouse in the first place. Deodorants are a case that readily comes to mind. It is not that advertising “created” the want for deodorants. This would suggest that people had no underlying appetite for such a product or were motivationally empty until advertising came along to promote deodorants.

Advertisers simply persuaded consumers to give more weight to the problem. Advertising highlighted and dramatized the function a deodorant could perform in removing smells that could cause potential embarrassment (“Even your best friend might not tell you”). Advertising has been very adept at exploiting the social consequences of bad breath, acne, body door, and so on. And advertising can dramatize the worst social nightmares, such as the ex-girlfriend marching into a restaurant and pouring a plate of spaghetti over the head of the former lover and his new paramour!

The brand image, as a set of ideas conjured up by the brand name, can be very vague and even, on occasions, not adequate to determine a reference. In other words, it can be analogous to a mental image of “gold” that never gets beyond an image of a yellow metal that is precious, which is a poor guide to actually identifying gold. 1 Not all brand images have force to affect brand choice. There is a need to generate a memorable image, preferably revolving around the competitive or critical advantage of the brand.

The different facets of a brand image may have no coordinating core, just as the image of someone we know may evoke ideas of voice, dress, walk, eyes, and hair with no coherent picture. The image of a brand can be fragmented, not constituting a coherent whole in the mind of the consumer. Yet the consumer needs to have a grasp of the brand as a unitary whole that serves the functions for which the product is bought.

Although the memory of a product is an image, this image may be derived from actual experience of the real product. The behavioural aspects of that experience will dominate the image; hence the importance of ensuring that all experiences with a brand are highly positive.

A brand image can speak to the imagination in a way that drowns out whatever speaks for substance. This is because it can symbolize a promise to meet or exceed expectations while, at the same time, stressing what values the brand stands for. An old established brand with a fine image is like a habitual buy; it suggests less risk in buying and lots of credibility. The image of a successful brand is a promise of performance in the functions for which it is being bought.

The promise need not be in terms of superior performance in the core use function but in terms of enhancing self-identity or other intangible benefit. And not only products have brand images; celebrities do. Mick Jagger has registered his name as a trademark embracing 20 products. This goes beyond mere licensing deals, allowing celebrities to exploit their names in building businesses. If we accept that possessions project a social identity and assert something about the buyers themselves, signaling where buyers stand and what values they are attracted to, the concept of a celebrity being marketed as a brand is not surprising.

Trust in a brand is assessed by asking how much customers think they can trust the brand to fulfill the functions of interest—always most of the time some of the time almost never But the most basic question of all relates to loyalty: which buyers buy which brands and do so because they both trust the brand and have an behavioural attachment to it With what degree of commitment For what functions A loyal customer is not only devoted to the brand but sticks with the brand when it is at a competitive disadvantage, because there is faith that things will improve over the long term. In this sense, loyalty is a normative goal for brand managers rather than something routinely attainable. In fact, the consumer can be loyal to a cluster of brands. While this reduces the sentiment of consumers for any one brand, it does not necessarily lead to a reduction in trust for a brand.

Barlow and Maul claim (rightly) that the most important aspect of customers’ experience is behavioural, rather than “satisfaction” as measured in surveys of consumer satisfaction. They point out that such surveys do not provide the breadth or depth of information needed to assess performance or guide the company. Satisfaction simply suggests “no serious complaints” rather than an behaviourally pleasing experience, which needs to be the goal if loyalty is to be achieved. Surveys need to capture something more akin to the behavioural meaning or experiential significance the customer associates with the brand.

Conclusion

In practice, selling is an amalgam of persuasive skills and tactics—for example, learning how to disagree without being disagreeable. We could teach sales trainees all that is known about the interpersonal influence process, but this would not necessarily make someone a good salesperson, since selling, like all skills, needs to be practiced. On the other hand, knowing something about the psychology of selling does provide the foundations for developing an overall strategy, even if success is tied to skills in implementation.

We have made no direct reference to physical beauty. Yet good looks are what most people think of when referring to someone being “attractive. ” The attractiveness of physical beauty is a good illustration of the like ability heuristic and of acting on instant appeal. As Setoff points out, beauty is powerfully pleasing, and when we see someone beautiful, we typically stop evaluating, selecting, and criticizing so as to “simply revel in the sight for just a moment. ” 31 In other words, we act on the behaviour of “gut” liking without cognitive evaluation. People are more likely to help the good-looking but less likely to ask them for help!

Consumers are satisfied with a promise if they feel confident that it will be honoured. This in turn depends on the credibility of those making the promise. A lack of credibility means a lack of trust, an absence that implies more risk. The credibility of an information source is important, whether that source is an individual, product, or company. Credibility and believability are often used as synonyms, though a communication source can be believable without being credible, as credibility suggests general believability. Credibility goes with persuasion, and a credible claim is one that consumers believe will be honoured. Usually a massive advertising campaign does provide some credibility, since it is perceived as the company “putting its money where its mouth is. ” The aim is always to avoid a “credibility gap”: a disparity between what is being claimed and the facts on the ground.

Every promise in marketing, whether in an ad or on a package, has some company or human face behind it. For a person or an institution to have credibility, it must be perceived as trustworthy and as having the relevant expertise or capability needed to deliver on the promise. The way a sales or service person fields questions and the apparent sincerity of expressed views operate as indicators of credibility. Sincerity is assumed to go with trustworthiness and is the counterpart of authenticity in products.

In the literature on persuasion, persons with high credibility have more persuasive impact—that is, find an audience that is more predisposed to believe the claims they make. This is not so much an empirical proposition as a conceptual truth, since a source of high credibility must have more persuasive impact than a source of low credibility as a matter of definition. However, saying what is involved in establishing credibility is something different. A brand’s reputation supports its credibility, while integrity is part of credibility, as it implies trustworthiness and honesty. Unethical conduct, poor service, exaggerated promises, poor quality, and tacky marketing hurt credibility. On the other hand, a high reputation increases trust, and trust is an essential element in credibility.

Credibility and attractiveness are not completely independent, since attractiveness casts a halo over credibility. In any case, the reputation of many brands has more to do with its image than with performance. When a speaker in an ad relies on dogmatic assertion or assertive rhetoric, the appearance of sincerity is essential, as there may be little else to go on. To come across as insincere is to be judged by others as not presenting a “true” (authentic) self, which carries over into the belief that what is being asserted is also likely to be untrue.

Bibliography

Barlow, Janelle, and Dianna Maul. (2000). Behavioural Value. San Francisco: Berrett-Koehler.

Bauman, Z. (1991). Modernity and Ambivalence. London: Cornell University Press.

Bell, David E. (1985). “Disappointment in Decision Making under Uncertainty. ” Operations Research, vol. 33, no. 1: 2–27.

Calder, Lendol. (1999). Financing the American Dream: A Cultural History of Consumer Credit. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press.

Campbell, Colin. (1987). The Romantic Ethic and the Spirit of Modern Consumerism. Oxford: Blackwell.

Cook, Emma. (1999). “What’s Getting up Your Nose?” Independent on Sunday, p. 22.

Csikszentmihalyi, Mihaly. (1990). Flow: The Psychology of Optimal Experience. New York: Harper and Row.

Damasio, Antonio R. (1994). Descartes’ Error: Behaviour, Reason and the Human Brain. New York: Putnam.

Elster, Jon. (1999). Alchemies of the Mind: Rationality and the Behaviours. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.

Fisher, Philip. (1999). Wonder, The Rainbow, and the Aesthetics of Rare Experiences. Cambridge: Harvard University Press.

Frijda, Nico H. (1988). “The Laws of Behaviour. ” American Psychologist, vol. 43, no. 5: 348–358.

Flanagan, Owen. (1996). Self Expressions: Mind, Morals, and the Meaning of Life. New York: Oxford University Press.

Frankl, V. (1963). Man’s Search for Meaning. New York: Simon and Schuster.

Festinger, Leon. (1957). A Theory of Cognitive Dissonance. Palo Alto, CA: Stanford University Press.

Goldman, Alvin I. (1995). “Interpretation Psychologized. ” In Folk Psychology, edited by Martin Davies and Tony Stone. Oxford: Blackwell, pp. 74–99.

Goldie, Peter. (2000). The Behaviours: A Philosophical Exploration. Oxford: Oxford University Press.

Goleman, Daniel. (1998). Working with Behavioural Intelligence. New York: Bantam Books, p. 52.

Kagan, Jerome. (1999). Three Seductive Ideas. Cambridge: Harvard University Press.

Kleinberg, Stanley S. (1991). Sources of Power: How People Make Decisions. Cambridge: MIT Press.

LeDoux, Joseph. (1997). The Behavioural Brain. New York: Weidenfeld.

Lewis, Thomas, Fari Amini, and Richard Lannon. (1999). A General Theory of Love. New York: Random House.

Luce, Mary Frances, James R. Bettman, and John W. Payne. (2001). Behavioural Decisions: Tradeoff Difficulty and Coping in Consumer Choice. Chicago: University of Chicago Press.

Marder, Eric. (1987). The Laws of Choice: Predicting Customer Behaviour. New York: Free Press.

Nozick, Robert. (1989). The Examined Life. New York: Simon and Schuster.

Ortony, A., G. L. Clore, and A. Collins. (1988). The Cognitive Structure of Behaviours. New York: Cambridge University Press.

Park, Denise C., and Angela Hall Gutchess. (1999). “Cognitive Aging and Everyday Life. In Cognitive Aging, edited by Denise Park and Norbert Schwarz. Philadelphia: Psychology Press, pp. 187–208.

Porter, Roy. (1999). The Greatest Benefit to Mankind: A Medical History of Humanity from Antiquity to the Present. New York: HarperCollins.

Schiffer, Frederic. (1998). Of Two Minds: The Revolutionary Science of DualBrain Psychology. New York: Free Press.

Thayer, Robert E. (1996). The Origin of Everyday Moods. New York: Oxford University Press.

Tversky, A., and D. Kahneman. (1986). “Rational Choice and the Framing of Decision. ” In “The Behavioural Foundations of Economic Theory, ” edited by R. M. Hogarth and Melvin W. Reder, part 2. Special issue of Journal of Business, vol. 59, no. 4.

Thagard, Paul. (2000). Coherence in Thought and Action. Cambridge: MIT Press.

Zajonc, R. B. (1980). “Feeling and Thinking: Preferences Need No Inferences. ” American Psychologist, 35: 151–75.