Researching Consumers‘ Attitudes: Some Difficulties, Problems and Dilemmas

Abstract

Consumers‘ attitudes have always had a central place in marketing theory and practice. There is a great number of different problems, difficulties and dilemmas, which come from different sources and have different content, and which very often arise as a stumbling block in researching consumers‘ attitudes. Part of them is already contained in different views on term attitudes itself. The second part lies in an unsolved puzzle of consumers‘ attitudes and behaviour relation. The third part is of methodological nature in research. The fourth is in usage of different, numerous techniques that researchers have at their disposal when researching attitudes. It might sound unbelievable, but since the 1960s till today, very few researchers have understood, and knew real nature of the term, essence and meaning of attitudes in marketing. There is even less of them who know how to examine attitudes and generally use adequately and productively. Attitudes belong to the most complex psychical processes. Thei complexity of attitudes is manifesting during the research. It is not a rarity to become convinced that important contents, such as: determining dimensions, components, sources of emerging and stability of researched attitudes are not present in attitudes‘ examination and research. In most cases, research results of consumers‘ attitudes are actually nothing more than statements about the existence of positive and negative attitudes. There is still no complex method that can be used in research. Different, essentially partial methods are being used instead, usually to investigate particular components and dimensions of consumers‘ attitudes. There are more groups of problems that appear in consumers‘ attitudes examination. For this occasion, we point out three: problems that result from lack of knowledge and not adequate understanding of attitudes; problems related to level of examinee‘s (consumer‘s) consciousness of his attitude; problems emerging from neglectful use of methodology of researching consumers‘ attitudes. In this work, we took into consideration three methods most often used in researching consumers‘ attitudes: semantic differential, Likert scale and psychodrama. Construction demands and the technique of constructing semantic scales is a difficult, complex, long-term and demanding work. Besides, interdisciplinary approach is needed, but almost always expensive and unacceptable in terms of costs. Psychodrama, as a contemporary and modern technique in researching consumers‘ attitudes, will certainly become more and more popular, in spite of its evident weaknesses, defects and limits. In all probability it will be more and more represented in practice of maketing research.