2.2.

1 Attitude

Attitudes are a learned tendency to evaluate objects in a certain way and it is often stated that
attitudes facilitate adaptation to the environment (Ajzen, 2001). Fishbein and Ajzen (1975)
refer to an attitude as a person’s location on a bipolar evaluative or affective dimension with
respect to an object, action or event. They argue that an attitude represents a person’s general
feeling of favourableness or unfavourableness towards some stimulus objects.

Attitude Development

There are several strategies that suggest different approaches to which an attitude is formed.
One of the most recognized theories is the Fishbein model by Fishbein and Ajzen (1975),
which suggest that an attitude forms strictly in a cognitive process, meaning that it origins
from solely analytical, deliberative evaluative categorization. The Fishbein model describes
the formation of attitudes as a deliberative or rule-based approach emerging from cognitive
beliefs that are previously stored in explicit memory (Fishbein & Ajzen, 1975). A cognitive
belief is referred to the sub processes or mechanisms that is connected to the

consumers information processing and reactions of external stimuli, taking place in the mind
of the consumer (Klöckner, 2011a).

Attitude objects can be divided into two types of categories: products and services. Products
and services both consist of functional properties, it is here the attitudes towards the attributes
within the product or service are developed. Their affect, utility and value which refers to the
hedonic consequences, gets the consumer to evaluate and develop attitudes against what
value the product or service has. Different brand attributes such as package design of the
product, advertisements in print and digital form and what manufacturer it is, connects to the
symbolic and social representations of the product or service, this refers to the external
stimuli that the consumer is exposed to. Researchers and managers within marketing rely
heavily on attitudinal surveys to estimate people’s preferential responses to objects and items
such as brands, products, websites etc. Therefore it is very important to understand how an
attitude is formed in the mind of the consumer as well as how intentions and behaviour is
influenced by attitudes (Argyriou & Melewar, 2011).

Attitudes are often used to find and measure attitudinal differences between different
segments of the population (Ajzen & Fishbein, 1980). In order to assess a person’s attitude
towards a specific behaviour one can use scaling models. An attitude towards behaviour in
this research implies that it is a person's judgement whether the behaviour is positive or
negative (Ajzen & Fishbein, 1980). It is important to keep in mind that this measuring
approach can also be implemented when measuring intentions of behaviour, which is the
purpose of this research.

Positive Attitude

An attitude is described as a learned tendency to evaluate an object, which would indicate

that a positive attitude is a learned tendency that evaluates an object as being favourable.
Positive attitudes are described as consumer positive evaluations of an object attributes based
on beliefs. If a consumer believes that a certain attribute is favourable it is easier to develop
positive attitudes towards a product, which possesses this certain attribute (Fishbein & Ajzen
1975). According to Shavitt (1990) a stimulus needs to emphasize the appropriate attitude
functions in order to evoke a positive attitude. Shavitt (1990) also states that objects such as
products and brand emphasize different functions in order to create a positive attitude. By
logic it is said that a person with positive attitudes towards an item will perform positive
behavioural actions and tasks. On the contrary if a person has negative attitudes towards an
item the likelihood of positive actions and behaviour decreases (Peabody, 1967). Even if it is
often said that positive attitudes leads to a positive consumer intentions and consumer
behaviour, it is difficult to prove since the measure of attitudes and their impact on intention
and behaviour is complex to measure and compare since they are intangible (Fishbein &
Ajzen 1975).

2.2.2 Subjective Norm

Subjective norm can also be referred to as social pressure, or social norm, is presented as the
“rules and standards that are understood by members of a group and that guide and/or
constrain human behaviour without the force of laws” (Cialdini & Trost, 1998, p.152).
Further, it has been shown that normative social beliefs influence behaviour as long as the
behaviour is public, not when it is private and the person conducting the behaviour is no
longer under surveillance by others (Prislin & Wood, 2005).

As mentioned in section 2.2, a subjective norm is one of the factors influencing intentions. A
subjective norm can be seen as the social pressure from a referent to perform or not to
perform certain action. They are based on normative beliefs, which along with behavioural-
and control beliefs constitute the salient beliefs determining a person’s intentions and actions
(Ajzen, 1991). The normative belief is a belief about another person and his/her behaviour
and it is the perception that is of essence – whether the person in question believes that a
referent thinks that he or she should, or should not, perform the behaviour. However it must
be acknowledged that not all referents’ opinions about behaviour are of importance: only the
salient referents will affect the subjective norm. In order to assess a person’s subjective norm,
the general motivation to comply with relevant referents must be determined since this
enables an assessment of referents and their individual weight of importance on a person’s
behaviour (Ajzen & Fishbein, 1980). Cialdini, Kallgren & Reno (1991) divided normative
beliefs into descriptive and injunctive norms. Furthermore a person’s injunctive norms
concern the beliefs of other referents – if other people in the group approve or disapprove. A
descriptive norm is the perception of how it is “normal” or common to behave in a certain
situation.

The discussion and research conducted by Trafimow and Finlay (1996) concerning the
subjective norms and attitudes is quite extensive and debates whether attitudes or subjective
norms predict behavioural intention more strongly. While attitudes normally influence
behavioural intentions to a greater extent than subjective norms, it has also been proposed
that this may differ since people’s subjective norms can be categorised into either attitudinal
or normative controlled. Whether a person is classified as normative controlled is determined
based on whether the reasons to perform a certain behaviour is attitudinal or normative
(Trafimow & Finlay, 1996).

2.2.3 Perceived Behavioural Control

Perceived behavioural control is the amount of control consumers believes they possess over
a certain action. Perceived behavioural control was added into the Theory of Reasoned
Action model in an attempt to deal with situations where consumers might lack control of the
behavioural interest. When the consumer possesses a strong control over the behaviour they
are expected to take action based on their intention whenever the next opportunity arises. The
main purpose of measuring perceived behavioural control is the ability to predict the actual
behaviour in question. Perceived behavioural control is measured by asking direct questions
about the consumers’ actual ability to take action towards certain behaviour or to deal with
factors that might constrain or enable the action in question.

The perceived behavioural control depends on the presence of several internal or external
factors that either aid or prohibits the behaviour. The perceived behavioural control consists
of two main groups of control; self-efficiency and controllability (Ajzen, 2002). The actual
behaviour has a direct link to perceived behavioural control mainly due to two assumptions:
(1) it has been concluded that a successful outcome of the behaviour is more likely to
increase with perceived behavioural control and (2) the perceived behavioural control can be
substitute for a measure of actual control, however this is determined by the accuracy of the
perceptions (Ajzen, 1991).

2.2.4 Intention

Ajzen (1991) explains intentions as the motivational factors that influence behaviour, more
specifically “they are indications of how hard people are willing to try, of how much of an

effort they are planning to exert in order to perform the behaviour” (Ajzen, 1991, p181). In
order to be able to predict that an intention leads to behaviour the measurement of intention
must correspond to the measure of behaviour (Ajzen & Fishbein, 1980). Further, it is
concluded that the stronger the intention, the more likely is a person to perform this
behaviour (Ajzen, 1991).

Fishbein and Ajzen (1975) further emphasises that intention is the best predictor of
someone’s behaviour, however if the behaviour needs to be understood the factors behind
these intentions are of essence. Based on Theory of Planned Behaviour the underlying factors
behind an intention are attitudes, subjective norms and perceived behavioural control. For the
intention to predict behaviour, two conditions must be met: (1) the measure of an intention
must be made right before the behaviour, since intentions can change over time, (2) the
behaviour must be of volitional control, which means that the person in question made a
conscious choice or decision to perform this act (Ajzen, 1985), much like making a decision
to purchase groceries online instead of in-store. According to Ajzen (2002) intentions are
perceived as being correlated to the immediate behaviour. It is said that a consumer often
intends to perform a behaviour if the beliefs about the action is evaluated positively and if
people in their surroundings thinks that the action should be done. This indicates that positive
attitudes and strong subjective norms have a positive influence on consumer intention of
performing a behaviour (Ajzen & Fishbein, 1980).

2.2.5 Behaviour
Behaviour is described as an action in a form that can be observed - for example attending a
meeting or buying a certain product in a store (Ajzen & Fishbein, 1977). Ajzen and Fishbein
(1977) suggest that attitudes are held and behaviours are performed in respect to certain
entities, in other words, it all depends on the situation of the item and person. Entities are
influenced by different or several elements such as the action, the target, the context and time
(Ajzen & Fishbein, 1977). Here the action is the behaviour, the target is at which direction
the action is directed, the context in which the action is performed and the time is when the
action is performed. It is also important to separate behaviour and outcome. For example
success on exams is not a criteria that can be used for measuring behaviour since this might
as well be an outcome of several actions such as studying hard, attending lectures or even
copying someone else’s test answers (Ajzen, 1991).

Human behaviour is a very complex area to study (Ajzen, 1991) and the amount of
behavioural categories is vast - a behavioural category can range from narrow categories such
as raising funds for a political candidate to broader categories such as health maintenance.
The behaviour theory within the Theory of Planned Behaviour suggests that there are two
types of behaviour, positive and negative. A positive behaviour is when the certain action is
performed and a negative behaviour is thus when the behaviour is not performed (Ajzen &
Fishbein, 1980).

2.3 Consumer Involvement

Product involvement is defined by Zaichkowski (1985) as the extent to which the consumer
perceives a product to be important. This reflects the consumer’s internal motivational state
and the interest and drive caused by the product class (Bloch, 1981). The degree of product
involvement affects the decision-making process and is therefore seen as an important aspect
influencing purchase decisions (Richins & Bloch, 1986).

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Purchasing groceries is regarded as a low involvement activity, which is recognised by a very

small amount of information search (Beharrell & Denison, 1995). This is known as habitual
buying behaviour, where the purchase has little involvement for the consumer and the
decision-making is made easier by making the purchases based on previous purchases
(Littler, 2015).

2.3.1 Habits

While the explanation and definition of habits varies heavily depending on the author and
context, Verplanken and Aarts (1999) developed a suitable explanation for the phenomena.
They state that habits are sequences of behaviour or acts that was learned and has become
automatic responses to certain cues. Furthermore it is explained that these automatic
responses are functional in the aim of specific end-states or goals. In other words, habits are
behaviours that in a consistent context are repeated and eventually performed with little or
non-existent thought process (Biel, 2011). This is emphasised in the research conducted by
Wood, Quinn & Kashy (2002), where the findings showed that when a behaviour had become
a habit, the participants were less likely to think and question their behaviour.

When an individual have strong habits, this will result in little search for new information and
therefore little to no attention is directed to finding alternative courses of action. Based on the
low involvement in information search and search for alternative options, Verplanken and
Aarts (1999) argue that it is only when habits are non-existent or fairly weak that models such
as Theory of Reasoned Action can be applied.

In the research conducted by Liao, Palvia and Lin (2006) concerning the roles of habits and
web quality in e-commerce, habits are important to consider in e-commerce consumer
behaviour due to the high impact on intentions. The link between direct continuance intention
and habits proves that the past behaviour will have a large impact on the consumer’s
assessment to continue with the behaviour or not (Liao et al., 2006). Purchasing groceries in a
physical store is a habitual behaviour since it is repeated regularly in a consistent context
(Biel, 2011). According to the Theory of Planned Behaviour (Fishbein & Ajzen, 2012), for a
change in behaviour to occur - a change in habits - positive attitudes and intentions must be
present.

2.4 Consumer Barriers

Previous market research has stated that consumers primary obstacle for using online grocery
shopping is the fact that the ability to feel, touch and evaluate the products the same way is
gone before taking the decision to purchase (Svensk Handel, 2014). This is also stated in the
qualitative research made by Ramus and Nielsen (2005) where they investigated the Theory
of Planned Behaviour regarding online grocery shopping and found that consumers expressed
a concern for the inability to sense and select products by touching and feeling the products
of interest. This was a major concern especially for perishable goods such as fruits, meat and
vegetables. The consumers perceived risk increased concerning giving up the control of the
selection of product, packaging and delivery to the retailer. Since the quality and of the goods
and the safety of the transportation cannot be supervised by the consumer, the risk of getting
damaged goods or the wrong goods delivered were perceived as negative for the service
(Ramus & Nielsen, 2005). Another perceived barrier by the consumers within online grocery
shopping is the fact that there is no ability to interact with store personnel (Agwu, 2013).

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2.4.1 Resistance to Change

According to Ram, Jagdish and Sheth (1989) consumers’ resistance can be the final cause for
market failure for an innovation. Consumer resistance is, according to Cambridge
Dictionaries Online “the fact that people are being unwilling to buy a particular service or
product” (2015). The resistance of the consumer is correlated to what kind of adopter he or
she is (Ram, et al., 1989). The tendency to adopt an innovation is different between
individuals, which has been categorized into five types of adopters are ranging on a scale,
referring to the timing of adoption: innovators, early adopters, early majority, late majority
and laggards (Littler, 2015).

The consumer’s resistance of innovation is affecting the timing of adoption (Ram et al.,
1989). An innovation is defined as an idea or invention that is being processed into a good or
service and it is new to the market. It must be replicable at an economical cost and satisfy a
specified need (Businessdictionary.com, 2015) Consumers that decides whether or not to
purchase an innovation are depending on different factors in their personal identity and
behaviour; their age, cultural preferences, income level, how easy it is to learn the usage, the
innovation’s usefulness and the value it brings to the consumer to use the innovation (Aguila-
Obra & Padilla-Melendez, 2006).

To encounter the resistance from customers, one has to consider barriers of functional and
psychological nature. In Agwu’s (2013) research concerning reluctance and resistance and
adoption to a specific e-commerce service in the United Kingdom, the functional and
psychological barriers of consumer resistance were stated to be reasons for low adoption in
the case of e-commerce services. The psychological barriers are barriers of tradition and
image, which are often caused by triggering a questioning of the consumer’s prior beliefs and
values. The more the deviation from what is considered and has been established as an
important tradition, is needed to adopt an innovation, the greater is the resistance.
Considering the image barrier, innovations include a certain identity and associations. It is
clear that the image barrier is perceptually bounded and derives from stereotyped thinking,
which makes it hard for an innovation to break through if the associations are unfavourable
(Ram et al., 1989).

The functional barriers consist of three different types; product usage, product value and risks
associated. The usage barrier has incentives that require changes in the routine of the
consumers, which depend on relatively longer development to gain consumer acceptance
(Ram et al., 1989). Since innovations requires great or technical changes in the consumer’s
routines, is the usage barrier known to be the primary reason for resistance of innovation and
therefore demands a long process to adjust and accept the usage of it (Lee, 2009). The value
barrier explains that the incentives favouring the innovation must be stronger than a
substitute. By comparing the performance to price with a similar product or service, the
customer will evaluate the value of the innovation (Ram et al., 1989). The risk barrier is
important since all innovation represent uncertainty to some extent. As there are different
types of risk to consider, such as physical, economic, functional and social risks, the
customers postpone the adoption of innovations until they know more about the risks.
Physical risks are harm that can be done to persons or property, economic risk are the cost of
investing in the innovation, functional risk relates to the performance of the innovation and
social risks are the resistance customers feel as they may face social exclusion if they adopt to
the innovation (Ram et al., 1989).

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2.5 Relevance of Theories

In order to understand and measure the relationship between attitude and consumer intention,
which is the purpose of this research, several central theories about behaviour is of great
significance. The Theory of Planned Behaviour establishes the connection between attitudes
and intention. It also includes subjective norms, perceived behavioural control, which is
believed to influence intentions as well. The Theory of Planned Behaviour has previously
shown to be of great significance when measuring and predicting consumer adoption towards
online grocery shopping (Grandón et al., 2011). The results gained by investigating the
Theory of Planned Behaviour with positive attitudes will enable the researchers to fill the gap
in the existing research.

By investigating theories that describes different factors connected to consumer involvement

and barriers, additional dimension to analyse the empirical findings is gained. Online grocery
shopping is part of the e-commerce industry and thus e-commerce as a market and online
consumer behaviour is elaborated upon. Based on the difference between traditional
consumer behaviour and online consumer behaviour, involvement and barriers for changing
routines and purchasing groceries online is included. Aspects of consumer adoption are
added, since online grocery shopping is classified as an innovation and thus it might cause
attitudes and intentions to differ from regular consumer behaviour. Grocery shopping is a
behavioural category that differs from other behavioural categories because of the habitual
nature of the purchasing process. Therefore the aspect habit is included and will be of essence
when analysing the different factors of Theory of Planned Behaviour with regards to the
intention of purchasing groceries online.