Why do some people buy the same brand of bread every week and never even look at the one next to it? It’s rarely about the bread itself. It’s about what that person believes about the brand, and how they feel about it. Those beliefs and feelings were built up over years of habit, advertising, packaging and the odd good or bad experience.
That’s why attitudes and beliefs matter so much. Much of what marketers do, from positioning to advertising, is an attempt to shape or reinforce them.
To keep things practical, let’s follow one example through the whole article. Imagine a small local bakery, Hillside Bakery, that has just launched a gluten-free loaf. The bakers are proud of it. But sales are slow. Why? To answer that, we need to understand what customers believe and how they feel.
What Are Beliefs and Attitudes?
A belief is something a consumer thinks is true about a product or brand. “Gluten-free bread is dry.” “Hillside uses good ingredients.” “Specialty bread is always expensive.”
Beliefs don’t have to be accurate. A customer can hold a wrong belief and still act on it.
An attitude is a bit different. It’s an overall evaluation of a brand, product or idea, either favorable or unfavorable. We can think of an attitude as sitting on top of a cluster of beliefs.
So a Hillside regular might believe the bakery is friendly, close to home and uses quality flour. Out of those beliefs comes an overall attitude: “I like Hillside.”
So beliefs are the building blocks, and the attitude is the summary judgment built from them.
The Three Parts of an Attitude
A common way to break attitudes down is the tri-component model, sometimes called the ABC model. It splits an attitude into three connected parts.
The Cognitive Part (Thinking)
This is what the consumer knows or believes. “The gluten-free loaf costs $9.” “It’s made fresh each morning.” These are factual-sounding claims, whether or not they’re actually right.
The Affective Part (Feeling)
This is the emotional response. A customer might feel comforted by Hillside because it reminds them of the bakery near their childhood home. Or they might feel a bit let down because the last specialty loaf they tried somewhere else was disappointing.
The Conative Part (Doing)
This is the behavior or intention that comes out of the thinking and feeling. Planning to buy the loaf, deciding to try it once or recommending it to a friend all sit here.
Usually the three parts move together. But not always. Imagine a customer, Sarah, who believes the gluten-free loaf is good quality and likes the bakery a lot. She still doesn’t buy it. Why? Because at $9 it feels like a luxury, and she isn’t gluten intolerant, so she doesn’t feel she needs it.
That gap between belief, feeling and behavior is exactly why we can’t assume a positive attitude will automatically lead to a sale.
Where Do Attitudes and Beliefs Come From?
Consumers don’t form beliefs out of nowhere. A few sources tend to matter most.
Personal experience is usually the strongest. If a customer bought a gluten-free loaf from a supermarket years ago and it crumbled into dust, that experience may shape their belief about all gluten-free bread, including Hillside’s.
Word of mouth can be almost as powerful. If a few friends say “the gluten-free stuff is never as good,” that belief can take hold even in someone who has never tried it.
Marketing communications are the most obvious source. They work by pairing a brand with certain claims or feelings, again and again, until they stick.
Family and social influences also play a part, often without the consumer really noticing.
How Do Beliefs Add Up to an Attitude?
Two well-known models help explain this.
The Multi-Attribute Attitude Model
This model is associated with the psychologist Martin Fishbein. The idea is that a consumer’s overall attitude is built from their beliefs about specific attributes, weighted by how important each attribute is to them.
Let’s try it with Hillside’s loaf. Imagine two customers rating it on three attributes, each scored out of 5.
- Taste: both customers rate it 4.
- Price (value for money): both rate it 2.
- Suitability for a gluten-free diet: both rate it 5.
So they hold the same beliefs. But they weight them differently. Tom has coeliac disease, so suitability matters most to him. Sarah eats anything, so she mostly cares about price and taste.
If Tom puts most of his weight on suitability, his overall score for the loaf will be high. If Sarah puts most of her weight on price, her score will be much lower. Same loaf, same beliefs, very different attitudes.
What does this tell the bakery? That a single set of product facts doesn’t produce a single attitude across all customers. Different segments care about different things, which is why segmentation and targeting matter so much. If you’d like to try the calculation yourself, there’s a multi-attribute attitude model Excel template on this site.
The Theory of Reasoned Action
Fishbein later worked with Icek Ajzen on the theory of reasoned action, which adds another ingredient: subjective norms. That just means what a consumer thinks the people who matter to them would expect them to do.
So a person’s intention to buy depends on two things. Their own attitude toward the product, and how they think others would view the purchase.
Back at Hillside, imagine a parent whose child has just been diagnosed with coeliac disease. They might be unsure about the loaf themselves. But if their doctor and a support group both recommend buying from dedicated gluten-free bakers, they may buy it anyway. Other people’s opinions are doing a lot of the work.
What Should Hillside Actually Do?
This is where the theory becomes useful. Instead of a vague goal like “improve our image,” the bakery can ask which belief is holding sales back.
If the problem is the belief that “gluten-free bread is dry,” free tastings in the shop could tackle it directly. Experience is the strongest source of beliefs, so letting people taste it is likely to work better than an ad claiming it’s moist.
If the problem is price, the bakery might offer a smaller half loaf. That doesn’t change the belief about quality, but it lowers the barrier for customers like Sarah.
And if the problem is simply that coeliac customers don’t know the loaf exists, the answer could be reaching the people they listen to, such as local support groups or pharmacists.
Notice that all of this links to positioning. When we say a brand is positioned as premium, or as the value option, we’re really describing the beliefs and attitudes it’s trying to build in customers’ minds.
What Are the Limitations?
Attitudes and beliefs are useful ideas, but we should keep a few cautions in mind.
First, attitudes don’t always predict behavior well, as Sarah shows. Price, availability, habit or a competing attitude can all get in the way.
Second, attitudes change, often because of things the brand can’t control, like a competitor’s new loaf or a bad online review. So monitoring beliefs is ongoing work.
Third, attitudes are hard to measure. What people say in a survey doesn’t always match what they do at the counter.
And once a purchase is made, attitudes can shift again. If a customer buys the loaf and then doubts their choice, they may experience cognitive dissonance, and the bakery’s follow-up can help settle those doubts.
Sources
Simply Psychology: Theory of Reasoned Action (Fishbein and Ajzen)
