Consumer attitude refers to the enduring evaluation of an object of consumption, issue, person or an act. Attitudes guide one’s thoughts, influence feelings and affect behaviors. Change in the behavioral pattern of consumers over the years has been due to several factors, and can best be described by consumer acculturation. Consumers use attitudes as a frame of reference to judge new information/objects. Ultimately, consumer attitudes which are learned and stored in memory play a crucial role in purchase decision making. A brief review of the attitude and behavior nexus conditioned by the consumer-related factors, social factors and the intervening situational factors are discussed herein, combining the Theory of Planned Behavior (TPB) and Technology Acceptance Model (TAM), based on a attitude-focused study on Microwave Oven (MWO). Consumer attitude has gained larger importance today in the modern marketing segmentation strategies, targeting and product positioning, which can be appreciated from the consumer-centric approach of all marketers today.

Consumer attitude is a learned predisposition to respond in a consistently favorable or unfavorable manner with respect to an object or action. Consumer attitudes vary in strength; they reflect the consumer’s values—learned/acquired over time and conditioned by the situations. The consumer attitudes lead to Behavioral Intention (BI) and to actual purchase behavior. Today, the consistency of attitude behavior is influenced by a host of factors which are delineated below that could guide the study of consumer behavior in future. Situational variables and marketenvironmental factors are not delineated herein for brevity.

Management Research Journal, Factors Influencing, Pre-Purchase Attitude, Consumers, Technology Acceptance Model, Theory of Planned Behavior, Microwave Oven, Influencing Factors, Scope of the Study, Formulation of Hypothesis.