ABSTRACT
When market researchers investigate consumers’ attitudes toward their products, brands, or marketing tactics they typically collect written responses to standard attitude questions. While this method is a good measure of capturing the attitude reported, it does not address the process by which that attitude is created. How does the researcher know, for example, if the reported attitude is one that was formed naturally and simply reported or was created in response to the measurement question itself (i.e., measurement-induced)? Further, if the method cannot differentiate between naturally occurring attitudes and measurement-induced attitudes, how can we determine the behavioral implications of the attitude formation process? That is not to say that question-induced attitudes do not happen in the real world, but rather that it is important to understand the difference between the two formation processes in order to understand how attitudes affect behavior.
