Introduction
Being a marketing manager at Lacoste, the marketing director requested a report to be prepared that describes the interlocking components of the attitudes that influence relationships between consumers’ attitudes and behaviors. In addition, the report tries to discuss some of the factors that may influence the purchasing of footwear.
According to Hoyer and Macinnis (2009), consumer behavior reflects the totality of the consumers’ decision with respect to the attainment, consumption, and nature of goods, services activities, experiences, people and ideas by human decision-making units.
Problem Statement
The main issue the report tries to illustrate is the factors that influence the purchasing of footwear by consumers.
Background Information on Lacoste
Lacoste is a sportswear company that was founded in 1933 by Rene Lacoste in France. The company focuses in the design, manufacture, and retailing of fashionable sports and street wear (Plunkett, 2008). It was one of the earliest businesses to have its brand name appear on the outside of its clothing. In addition, it replaced the woven fabric starched classic shirts with white shirts that were shorter than the previous shirts. The company’s crocodile logo on its polo shirts has revolutionized the sportswear industry. The company markets its products to golf and tennis professionals. Currently, it has ventured into production of shoes in the sports industry and casual setting. Furthermore, it also manufactures belts, colognes, watches, footwear, umbrellas, and eyewear.
Most of its products is marketed to about 925 companies owned boutiques and more than 2000 corner stores in 110 countries (Plunkett, 2008). Moreover, the company provides sponsorships to Lacoste players such as the golfers and tennis players. The company has plans to increase its operations in China, which has more than 130 stores.
2.0 Factors Influencing Purchase of Footwear
2.1 Personal Characteristics
Sarangapani (2010) provides some personal characteristics that can influence a consumer when buying footwear. These include occupation, economic situation, consumer’s age, and lifecycle stage, lifestyle, self-concept, and personality (Sarangapani, 2010).
Occupation
A consumer’s occupation will affect the footwear type the consumer purchases. For instance, golfers will be inclined to buy footwear that is more associated with their sport. Consumers with a normal eight to five office job are inclined to buy leather shoes. Hip-hop artists and other musicians in the music industry may prefer designer sports shoes or casual ones depending on their preference. If the company’s understands the diversity of its consumers, it can be able to meet each occupational group’s needs.
Economic Situation
Levels of personal income and savings influence the footwear choice (Hawkins, 2010). Low-income earners will opt to select low-priced footwear, whereas high spenders are likely to purchase expensive footwear. Production of footwear for different economic levels of consumers allows the company to maximize its profits.
Age of consumer and lifecycle stage of consumer
As a consumer matures from a child to an adult the footwear type, he wears changes. This can be attributed to growth of the body. In addition, a family man will require a different shoe type from children or young adults. Young adults in campus and colleges may prefer designer sport shoes, whereas the family man may opt for simple, casual footwear.
Self-concept and personality
Personality can be described in terms of self-confidence, adaptability, aggressiveness, or sociability (Hawkins, 2010). While designing the footwear, the manufacturer has to consider these personality traits in order to meet the different preferences of the consumers. Certain footwear may raise the confidence of the consumers simply because it resembles the consumers self image. Furthermore, designing footwear to reflect consumers identities may help in increasing the footwear sales.
2.2 Individual Circumstances
Individual circumstances that influence consumer behavior in purchasing footwear include psychological factors such as motivation, perception, attitudes, beliefs, and learning.
Perception
Perception refers to the way people choose, categorize, and construe information to form a significant image of the world (Hawkins, 2010). The consumer perceives footwear types differently. This could depend on the consumer’s sight, touch or smell regarding the footwear. Three perceptual processes that affect the consumer’s final decision are selective distortion, selective attention, and selective retention.
Selective distortion elaborates the inclination of consumers’ to interpret information concerning footwear in a way that will coincide with what they believe. Advertising of the footwear has to affect how the consumers interpret information. Selective attention describes the consumers’ tendency to screen out familiar information. The marketing manager has to ensure that the design of footwear captures the consumer’s attention. Selective retention refers to the tendency of consumers to retain information that affects their attitudes and beliefs (Hawkins, 2010). In order to capture the consumers’ attention, marketing is done in such a way that the consumer will be able to retain information easily. For instance, use of drama and repetition in advertisement can increase consumers’ retention of information.
Beliefs and Attitudes
Consumers’ attitudes towards footwear will affect their feeling towards the different footwear. Attitudes may direct a consumer to either like or dislike a footwear type. Consequently, this will affect whether the consumer purchases the footwear or not. Belief, on the other hand, is based on faith, real knowledge, or opinion (Hawkins, 2010). Beliefs are important in formulating a brand image in footwear.
Learning
Certain behaviors consumers exhibit while purchasing goods are acquired through the process of learning. This can be through cues, responses, drive, or stimuli (Hawkins, 2010). Cues determine how, when and where a consumer responds, whereas drive calls for a consumer to act. Associating the footwear with strong drives and motivating cues increases the demand for footwear.
Motivation
Consumers tend to buy goods that will satisfy their most required need. Motive is that pressing force that pushes the consumer to satisfy the need (Hawkins, 2010).
2.3 Social Environment
Two social factors that influence purchase of footwear by consumers are family, and the role and status (Hawkins, 2010). The wife heavily influences the footwear type a husband may decide to purchase. The footwear has to be designed in a way that will attract the wife and at the same time fascinate the husband. Children may also affect the footwear type to be purchased for the whole family. In most cases, children want the entire family to have uniform footwear. Providing footwear that suits families may enhance the demand for family footwear. Different roles represent different levels of status in the society. For instance, a mayor of a town may want to be seen working out with the best footwear in town or an athlete may want to use the most advanced footwear in competitions.
3.0. Components of Attitudes Influencing Behavior
Attitudes refer to the continuing evaluative character or nature towards a particular good or service (Iyiola, 2008). Emotions largely influence these attitudes. According to Iyiola (2008), attitudes affect consumer behavior largely. A consumer’s attitude has a varying impact at any one particular time. This implies that some attitudes are stronger compared to others attitudes (Pride and Ferrell, 2010). In addition, consumers acquire these attitudes through familiarity and interaction with other consumers (Pride and Ferrell, 2010).
Positive attitude towards a commodity by the consumer will result in the consumer purchasing the commodity. This positive attitude is developed through advertising and promoting of the commodity. Consumers feel comfortable when buying commodities based on their own established attitudes of the product. This positive attitude towards footwear generates loyalty in the consumers and results, in the consumer arriving, at a buying decision quickly (Hawkins, 2010). However, changing these consumer attitudes towards a certain brand of footwear is a challenging task.
Attitudes result because of information, knowledge, thinking, lifestyle, communication, belief, faith or through observation. Attitudes tend to change with environment the consumer is exposed to or due to time. Attitudes comprise of three major components. These are the cognitive, affective and the conative components (Pride and Ferrell, 2010).
3.1 Cognitive Component
Cognitive component refers to the consumer’s knowledge and information about a product or a commodity (Pride and Ferrell, 2010). In addition, cognitive components include knowledge and perceptions of a consumer acquired through experience with a product or contact with information from different sources. These knowledge and experiences form what are the beliefs of a consumer (Iyiola, 2008).
Choi (2010) suggests that the cognitive components are constant over a long period and fundamentally important since they form a link with the basic values. Consequently, this makes difficult to change the consumers’ beliefs. However, new information and knowledge that is believable and realistic can be able to change these beliefs (Choi, 2010). The cognitive component towards a retailing company, Footwear store, in this case, will depend on the diverse attributes and functions relating to the footwear company. Furthermore, the footwear-retailing store should provide a pleasurable atmosphere that will affect the responses of consumers positively (Choi, 2010). For example, a consumer may have the belief that low-priced footwear that is designed for different terrain is cost efficient and those injuries during training are reduced.
3.2 Affective Component
This component relates to consumers feelings and emotions regarding a product or brand. In some instances, these emotional reactions can be spontaneous (Choi, 2010). Lantos (2010) defines the affective component as the feeling, emotional and mood component. This component comprises of evaluations such as whether a brand is good or bad (Lantos, 2010). In most cases, personal taste influences these perceptions. In addition, the affective component describes the way people feel about their vivid beliefs (Lantos, 2010). Furthermore, emotional states can simply reflect a general mood or feeling without being rooted in cognitive beliefs.
The affective pleasure the consumer draws from a brand or good will influence the consumers’ willingness to purchase the brand (Choi, 2010). For example, a consumer may have a belief that certain Lacoste footwear has a low price, is appealing, is designed to provide extra protection to the legs with regards to the ground they are used on, and the has a trusted brand name. To the consumer, owning such footwear will provide emotional benefits such a feel safe when training and the brand name will make the consumer comfortable while training.
3.3 Conative Component
Lantos (2010) describes the conative component as the intentions and behavior actions that a consumer portrays. Behavioral intentions consist of the probability that a consumer will undertake a specific action towards a brand or commodity. These intentions are based on the cognitive and affective components. Marketers use buying intentions of consumers to determine future consumer behavior on different goods. The cognitive and affective components influence the conative component. For instance, informing a consumer of a new Lacoste brand (cognitive) or depicting the brand as a fashionable brand (affective), might influence the consumer to buy or plan to purchase the brand in the future.
4.0 Conclusion
Attitudes largely affect consumer behavior. For an organization to be successful in marketing its brand, it has to understand how the attitudes of consumers influence the consumers purchasing behavior. Currently, techniques such as promotions, sponsorship, and corporate sponsorship of sports activities and teams have gained popularity. Corporate sponsorship as a marketing tool affects consumer attitudes. The ability of corporate sponsorship to influence consumer attitudes is because of the wider media coverage linked with the sponsored sports activities.
Lacoste incorporates sponsorship in its marketing especially in golf and tennis sports clothes. Extending this sponsorship to footwear will increase the purchasing of footwear associated with these sports. Consumers tend to view sponsorship as an indirect way of persuading them to purchase a certain brand. This is less threatening compared to the traditional advertising, which consumers see as more threatening.
As Lacoste Company, strategies can be employed to influence consumer’s attitudes towards the brand by applying molding strategies to the components of attitudes that affect consumer behavior (Lantos, 2010). In the cognitive component, Lacoste can try to provide rational appeal using common sense and argumentation. For the affective component, Lacoste can create adverts that incorporate a sports personality, who is famous and likable to the consumers while for the conative component, including additional free accessories in footwear may encourage consumers to purchase the brand.
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