MKT 554 Week 4 Attitude Formation Example

Worth It After the First Year? How Families Form Attitudes Toward Staying in Band and Keeping a Rent-to-Own Instrument

[Student Name]

University of Phoenix

MKT/554: Consumer Behavior

Week 4 Assignment

[Instructor Name]

[Date]

Harmon and Vale Music, its customers and its retention figures are composites written for a model paper.

Harmon and Vale Music, the composite 11-store Texas chain studied in this course, rents most beginner band instruments on rent-to-own plans in which each monthly payment builds credit toward ownership. If a family keeps the instrument for 30 months, it owns it. The model works for the chain and for families when students stay in band. But 38 percent of beginner rentals are returned within the first year, most between January and April of sixth grade, and another 14 percent in the second year. Each early return means lost revenue, a used instrument to recondition and, often, a child who stopped playing. The marketing team surveyed 410 families who returned instruments last spring and interviewed 20 parents and students. This paper analyzes how families form attitudes toward continuing band and toward the rental plan, and recommends ways to strengthen those attitudes.

What an Attitude Is

In consumer research, the word refers to a person's durable, summary judgment of something, whether a product, a person, an idea or an action. It has cognitive parts, the beliefs a person holds; affective parts, the feelings it evokes; and links to intended action. Attitudes toward a behavior, such as continuing band, matter more for prediction than attitudes toward an object, such as music in general. Many parents in the interviews loved music in general but felt lukewarm about another year of band.

The Theory of Planned Behavior

Ajzen (1991) proposed that intentions to perform a behavior depend on three factors: the person's attitude toward the behavior, based on beliefs about its outcomes; subjective norms, grounded in what the person believes family, friends and other valued people expect; and perceived behavioral control, based on beliefs about how easy or difficult the behavior is. Intentions, together with actual control, predict behavior. Each factor can be traced to specific beliefs, which makes the model useful for diagnosis.

Attitudes Toward Continuing

In the exit survey, parents' beliefs about continuing were mixed. Most believed band helped discipline and friendships, but 57 percent believed their child "was not getting much better" by winter, and 44 percent believed practice caused conflict at home. Students who quit commonly said the music was boring or that their friends were in other activities. Feelings mattered: several parents described the nightly reminder to practice as the worst part of their evening. The overall attitude toward another year was therefore weakly positive at best.

Subjective Norms

Important others pulled in both directions. Band directors encouraged continuing, but many families had little contact with them after the fall concert. Grandparents who paid part of the rent were strong supporters. Friends' choices weighed heavily on students; one student said she quit because her two closest friends joined volleyball. Where the family's social circle valued band, through a parent who had played or a sibling in high school band, returns were far less common.

Perceived Behavioral Control

Control beliefs centered on time and money. Parents of students in several activities said they could not fit practice and rehearsals into the week. Some families found the monthly payment hard to keep up in winter, after holiday spending. Twenty-six percent of returning families said cost was a main reason.

Many families did not decide that band was bad; they drifted into believing it was not worth the effort, the conflict and the payment.

Weak Attitudes and Accessibility

Fazio et al. (1989) showed that attitudes predict behavior more strongly when they are accessible, meaning they come to mind quickly and easily. In their study, people with highly accessible attitudes toward products were more likely to choose products consistent with those attitudes. Many parents rarely thought about band between concerts, so when a decision point arrived, such as a schedule conflict or a large bill, a vague attitude gave way to immediate pressures. Parents who attended several events a year, by contrast, held clear, quickly recalled views.

Exposure and Feelings

Zajonc (1968) found that repeated exposure to an object, even without any additional information, tends to make people like it more, the mere exposure effect. Mitchell and Olson (1981) showed that brand attitudes are shaped not only by beliefs about product attributes but also by feelings toward the advertising itself, such as pleasant images. Together these findings suggest that families' attitudes can be strengthened by frequent, positive contact with their child's music, not only by arguments about its benefits.

Students' Own Attitudes

The students' attitudes deserve separate attention, since children of 11 and 12 take part in the decision. Interviews with ten students who quit and ten who stayed showed a clear difference in what they believed band would be like. Students who stayed described playing songs they recognized, sitting with friends in rehearsal and a moment in the fall concert when the band sounded good. Students who quit described months of exercises, embarrassment at playing alone in front of others and practice that felt like homework. Their attitudes were formed less by information than by experience in the first few months.

Attitudes Differ by School

Return rates varied widely across schools, from 22 percent at schools whose directors held winter performances and sent regular updates to families, to 51 percent at schools with no events between December and May. The difference fits the accessibility finding: families at active programs encountered band often and held clearer, more favorable attitudes. It also suggests that the chain's strongest partners in retention are the directors themselves.

The Attitude Toward the Rental Plan

Attitudes toward the rent-to-own plan were more positive than attitudes toward continuing band. Most families understood that payments built equity, but 61 percent of returning families did not know how much they had already built when they returned the instrument, and many assumed they would lose everything. Had they known that a $32 trumpet rented for nine months carried $288 in credit toward ownership or toward a larger instrument, some might have kept it or transferred the credit.

Recommendations

First, target the first winter with experiences that raise accessibility and positive feeling: a January "play-along night" at each store where sixth graders perform simple songs with high school players, and short videos of each school's beginner band sent to families. Second, strengthen norms by inviting grandparents and older siblings and by supporting band directors with a midyear note to families. Third, address control beliefs with a practice guide that suggests 15-minute routines and with a winter payment pause for families who request it. Fourth, show each family's ownership credit on every monthly statement and offer credit transfer to another instrument if a child switches. Success will be measured by first-year return rates, which the chain aims to lower from 38 to 30 percent within two years.

Conclusion

Families' decisions to stop band are shaped by beliefs about progress and conflict, by the views of friends and family and by limits on time and money, and by attitudes that are often weak and rarely recalled. Research on planned behavior, accessibility and exposure explains the pattern and points to interventions that make music visible, supported and affordable during the months when attitudes turn.

References

Ajzen, I. (1991). The theory of planned behavior. Organizational Behavior and Human Decision Processes, 50(2), 179-211. https://doi.org/10.1016/0749-5978(91)90020-T

Fazio, R. H., Powell, M. C., & Williams, C. J. (1989). The role of attitude accessibility in the attitude-to-behavior process. Journal of Consumer Research, 16(3), 280-288. https://doi.org/10.1086/209214

Mitchell, A. A., & Olson, J. C. (1981). Are product attribute beliefs the only mediator of advertising effects on brand attitude? Journal of Marketing Research, 18(3), 318-332. https://doi.org/10.1177/002224378101800306

Zajonc, R. B. (1968). Attitudinal effects of mere exposure. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 9(2, Pt. 2), 1-27. https://doi.org/10.1037/h0025848