advanced theory and practice in sport marketing - Marshalls University

How the Attitudes of the Sport Consumer Are
Formed and Changed
An attitude is a state of mind or behavioral predisposition that is consistently
favorable or unfavorable with respect to a product or situation. Attitudes are
formed in many different ways, but most often they are formed either from personality
factors or are learned from environmental influences. As mentioned at
the end of the previous segment, sport marketers strive to control the attitudes
of the sport consumer. But how is that accomplished?
There are a number of models for attitude formation and identification. The
most prevalent of these is the tri-component attitude model, where cognitive,
affective, and conative factors are considered. The cognitive component focuses
on the knowledge and perceptions of the sport consumer that are acquired from
a direct experience with an attitude object – in this case a person, behavior or
event related to the sport product. The affective component involves the emotions
or feelings of the sport consumer as related to the specific sport product.
The conative component centers on the likelihood that the sport consumer will
carry out a specific action or behavior as a result of the interaction with the
attitude object.
Another model is the multi-attribute attitudes models. These series of models
examine the makeup of sport consumer attitudes in terms of the attributes
of the sport product. The first is the attitude-toward-object model, where the
sport consumer will have a positive attitude toward the sport products they feel
have an acceptable level of attributes that they want, and a negative attitude
toward sport products they feel do not have what they are looking for. Next is
the attitude-toward-behavior model, which states that the attitude of the sport
consumer toward a specific behavior related to the sport product is a function
of how strongly they believe that the action will lead to a specific outcome. The
final model is the theory-of-reasoned-action model. This is a theory that interprets
the interrelationship between attitudes, intentions, and behavior, which
in turn should lead to better explanations and predictions of sport consumer
behavior.
There are two other models of attitude formation that are utilized by sport
marketing professionals. The trying-to-consumer model tries to account for an
attempted purchase of the sport product by investigating personal and environmental
barriers. The attitude-toward-the-ad model simply investigates the feelings
and judgments of sport consumers based on their exposure to sport-related
advertisement. The measurement involves the attitudes toward both the advertisement
and the sport product.
Since different sport consumers may like or dislike the same sport product
for different reasons, a practical framework for examining attitude functions
of sport consumers can be very useful for the sport marketing professional. In
general, there are four basic attitude functions sought in the sport consumer.
The ego-defensive function suggests that since most sport consumers want to
protect their self-images from inner feelings of doubt, they seek to replace their
uncertainty with a sense of security and personal confidence. The knowledge
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