Marketer uses marketing strategy to influence consumer attitude in the decision-making process. Coca-Cola is used as low involvement product example.
Need recognition is involved in consumer decision-making process as the first stage. Marketer understands the consumer need and develops the marketing strategy for satisfying them and drawing their attention. The Levels of needs in Maslow’s Hierarchy shows that drink is the physiological needs which are essential to survival for the human. (Maslow, A. 1943: 370). it creates a motivation to seek for a drink. marketer have to draw consumer attention via marketing strategy and consumer interprets the information from marketing strategy or past experience and generate new knowledge, feeling, and belief about the product. The process is called interpretation processes. Peter, P.J. and Olson, J.C. (2010: 48) states Interpretation processes involved two cognitive processes: attention and comprehension. Attention means how consumers select what kind of information to interpret or ignore. Comprehension means how consumers understand the meaning of marketing stimuli and create belief and personal knowledge for it. In others words, Consumer would like to select the information that relevance or feel the interest to pay attention the meaning of information and generate the new knowledge and belief by combining the past experience and new information. The belief could be positive and negative due to the consumer how to interpret the information and how stimuli influence them. For example, sociality change let consumer take conscious control of the problem-solving process which creates new need and to identify and generate a new goal and different decision process. Coca-Cola is deemed to be fat (negative functional consequences) and as it contains a lot of sugar(attribute) but it is tasty (positive functional consequences). Consumers might worry (negative affective response) about it and I believe fat is unattractive (psychological consequences) and perceived coke as an unhealthy drink and value of the Coca-Cola is unhealthy. However, consumers might think coke has a 1% secret formula which has functional consequence is tasty; the psychological consequence is happiness; and the value is to relax. The positive belief (Coca-Cola is tasty which made me feel happiness and relax) affects the attitude to become positive. In contrast, the negative belief (Drinking Coca-Cola is fat as it is made of lots of sugar) create a negative attitude. Consumers who have a positive attitude toward product are more likely to form an intention to buy than people who has a negative attitude. Due to solve the approach-avoidance conflict. Tasty and healthy are the conflict so Coca-Cola marketer produced a coke light which is lower sugar and seems healthier than the old one. Consumers who avoid too much sugar and want to be healthier likely to purchase.
Also, environment stimuli not only draw attention but also influence consumer’s feeling and belief toward the brand. Attitudes is an overall evaluation to express the how favorable and unfavorable toward an object. (Hoyer, W.D., and Machnnis, D.J. 2012: CH 5) and both affective system and conigtive system are combined to form an overall evaluation or a brand attitude (Peter, P.J. and Olson, J.C. 2010: 48). Therefore, belief and feeling toward determining the consumer’s attitudes of the brand is positive or negative. The belief express the mental processes of understanding, evaluating, planning, deciding and thinking. in other words, it is consumer belief about a particular product which is formed by experiences , memories, and knowledge. For example, Marketer uses color in packaging or brand that arrest the attention and transmit different emotion and meaning to consumers. (Evans, M., Jamal, A. & Foxall, G. 2009:73) Color could influence the consumer affective system which produced positive or negative affective responses such as happy, dislike, love etc. For example, the color of Coca-Cola is red which is perceived as active, hot and vibrant (Madden, T. J., Hewett, K. and Roth, M. S. 2000:90). Consumers might create favorable feeling (affective response) toward Coca-Cola due to the red color of packaging and brand design(stimuli).
Affective state would affect consumer attitude toward the product (Jansson-Boyd, C.V. 2010:83). For example, people who have a good mood are easier to notice the positive aspect of the marketing strategy and information; to create positive attitudes. Marketer always influences affective state of consumers via TV commercial by introducing the plot, sound etc. sensory stimulus. For example, Coca-Cola TV commercial “extending the delicious” invited Nicholas Tsang to cook in the kitchen and share the food and coke with many teenagers who are around Nicholas Tsang. They were holding the party and very joyful with drink Coca-Cola. The background music was playing in quick and rock rhythm. This advertising influence consumer affective responses. Teenagers consumer might evaluate Coca-Cola favorable via TV commercial. The mood became relaxed. And the emotion was influenced to be joyful. Because they love to play with friends and having parties. And they perceived psychology benefit that drinking coke is good for parties and drink together with friends and delicious food(Belief). Also, inculcating the procedural knowledge “if having a party or eating delicious food, it is better to drink Coca Cola”. Also, Nicholas Tsang is the idol who are popular among the teens. Consumers might reflect they feeling about Nicholas Tsang to Coca-Cola. Nicholas Tsang is a brand association with Coca-Cola. When people see Nicholas Tsang, they might recall for his Coca-Cola TV commercial that increases the attention of Coca-Cola too and delivers the positive affective response toward Coca-Cola via Nicholas Tsang. Also , the TV commercial of Coca-Cola always adversities a lot of and make people unconcise to store memory. Therefore, Coca- Cola brought Read Drink coke message to make consumer associate coca cola (Stephen, B. 2001:16) and then have a strong association with the Coca-Cola logo, the color and value which of the brand in order to increase sales and popularity of its products. (Nick, B. 2012:48)
For searching information state, Low involvement products are not easy to draw consumer attention and consumer in Low involvement lacks of motivation to consider the alternative product. Hence, marketer wants to increase the level of involvement in order to increase the attention. Coca-Cola creates the new packaging design that the different people names, months, day and the lyrics are added and created a Coca-Cola TV commercial “share the coke” in 2016, the boy delivered the coke which has the lyrics to his girlfriend for showing the love with his girlfriend and the girl they love. The TV uses Peripheral route to persuasion to draw attention. The product characteristics (new packaging design) and consumer characteristics (need: showing love with their lover) increase intrinsic self-relevance and hence increase the involvement with Coca-Cola. In other words, using the means-end basis for involvement theory, consumer level of involvement depends whether the product attributes are linked to their goal or values or not. Consumer might think sharing Coca-Cola new packaging design product (attributes) not only a gift for thirst need (functional consequences that tangible outcome of product use) but also help them to increase the relationship (psychosocial consequences that the social outcomes of product use) with the one they love and make consumer be feeling in love (value). This knowledge and perceived positive consequences that consumer got form the TV commercial results in a positive belief toward Coca-Cola and also positive feeling. Therefore, the positive personal belief and feeling creates positive attitudes and increase intention to purchase. Also, for low involvement product, marketer can use some promotions to increase the intention of buy. The level of Low involvement hierarchy is from doing to feel ,then, to think (Soloman, M.R. 2014:275). The theory stated that consumers are with limited knowledge then forms evaluation after purchasing and are likely to respond to simple stimulus. Sales Promotion are using incentive approaches to pull consumer for purchasing and also draw consumer attention and intention to buy. For example, Coca- Cola create a lucky draw promotion buy cokes for collecting stamp and exchange for over 10,000 pieces gift.
Marketer also creates event for building people attitude and intention toward the brand. Let people have direct experience of the product can generate attitudes and intention to purchase (Jansson-Boyd, C.V. 2010:83). Eriksson(2011:61)suggest that using multiple sense to create a brand experience can make the experience more powerful and differentiate. In other words, give the consumer to have direct sensory sense experience could increase more attitudes and intention for purchasing. For example, Coca-Cola provides free coke to people who downloaded its app in summer and promote slogan “taste the feeling”. Drinking Coke is a sensory experience which using vision, sound, touch, taste, and smell. For vision, the Coca-Cola product packaging design such as red color which made consumers feel actives and hot. For sound, consumers would hear “Fizz” when opening and drinking it to made consumers feel arousal. For touch, touching freeze coke in summer which made consumers feel great. For smell, when consumers are drinking, they will smell sweet which made them feel favorable. and the sensory system creates feeling experience which made consumer associate Coca-Cola with affective feelings of joy, active and favorable. Then, creating personal relevance and hence has more motivation to purchase in order to achieve cheerfully and happiness (Terminal value).
To conclude, marketer develops their marketing stimuli by understanding consumer need and the perceived consequences of using the product. And forming people positive affective response and belief by promotion such as free drink and TV commercial, And knowing low involvement decision-making process to increase the consumer interest by name, lyrics, birthday etc. brand packaging design.r essay