I think seminars are of two kinds - there are those which confirm one's prejudices, and those which enable one to re-organize and rearrange one's prejudices, and I would say that this is certainly of the second kind - that I have rearranged all of my prejudices and dusted them up a little. Certainly, being serious, this seminar has made me think, and I have found it very valuable. I'd like today to speak under four headings, which I hope will do justice to most, though not all, of the topics that we've discussed. I'm not going to refer back to all of the papers in the seminar, by any means.
Within this paper I will be concerned with two specific aspects of evaluating this particular Fishbein study: A) Does the theory work? is there a clear relationship between the measures taken and behavioural intention? For if there is we can isolate and assess the worth of contributory components; B) Is it useful? Does it contribute or is it likely to contribute to advertising or marketing planning?
In this paper we would like to: 1) initially show some examples of the results we have obtained using the model, indicating the various degrees of success and failure we have achieved; 2) briefly discuss some of the factors which TNA has found critical (i.e. variations in the application which can and do substantially affect the results); 3) finally, go on to indicate some of the conclusions we have come to in order to make our Fishbein results more reliable, and we believe more meaningful to advertisers .
The author comments some of the main points raised in the papers on Fishbein Theory.
I do not wish to comment on Timothy Joyce's paper at length, but there are several points at which he misrepresents Fishbein theory, and I would like to comment on two of these.
Market segmentation has during the past few years been an intensively discussed topic. The discussion has, however, caused a clarification of thinking and a more effective utilisation of various methods. Market segmentation has so far proceeded in two directions. With a rough generalisation these two directions could be described as follows: - Segmentation of consumers to mutual exhaustive groups by using some clustering method as for example Belsons or Morgan-Sonnquist's segmentation analysis, typology analysis, Q-type factor analysis, etc . - Segmentation of products or examination of the structure of a market as perceived by consumers. This has mostly been done by using geometric spatial models, so called brand maps . These main directions of market segmentation have in some sense been seen competing with each other. And yet these two ways of thinking should necessarily be regarded as one entity. For, it can be noticed that as soon as we "forget" one of them, our idea of the other also weakens .
In the original printed paper I said that a difficulty about the concept of "focus" was to know how to measure it, and that the nearest I could get was the brand image questioning system used on the API, which allows people to mention or not mention brands on statements . If a brand is not mentioned on a statement, it may be presumed "out of focus" on it. In my spoken paper I had intended to mentionsome more pieces of evidence for the existence of "focus".
My approach to the Fishbein model and other models in this paper is going to be critical to a certain extent. I would like to make clear that this is not to be taken for condemnation. The Fishbein model does indeed provide some very useful insights (it has certainly stimulated us to some constructive thought) and there are certain research purposes, for which it is very suitable. I still find, however, that I cannot accept the psychological universality which Mary Tuck claims for the Fishbein model, and in particular I am not convinced that it accounts adequately for the persuasion process which we are interested in at this seminar.
The relationship of attitudes to behaviour remains a problematic area for social psychology and commercial research. This paper reports on a recent model of their relationship proposed by Professor Martin Fishbein of Illinois, which seems particularly suggestive for commercial research purposes. After a brief discussion of the Fishbein theory of attitude construction and measurement, a case study is presented which shows the value of the attitude measurements proposed for commercial research. The Fishboin theory of the relationship of attitudes to behaviour is then discussed and some evidence from case study is presented to show how the theory can be operationalised in the commercial field. The Fishbein 'method offers a means not only for discovering what are the consumer's clusters of beliefs, norms, attitudes about the product but also of understanding the structure of norms and attitudes and their relative importance in controlling behavioural intentions and behaviour.