nttitude describes a person’s relatively consistent evaluations, feelings, and tendencies toward an object or an idea. Attitudes put people into a frame of mind for liking or disliking things and moving toward or away from them. For example, many people who have developed the attitude that eating healthy food is important perceive vegetables as a healthy alternative to meat and chicken. As a result, the per capita consumption of vegetables has increased during recent years, leading the meat and chicken producers to try to change consumer attitudes that chicken and meat are unhealthy. Companies can benefit by researching attitudes toward their products. Understanding attitudes and beliefs is the first step toward changing or reinforcing them. Attitudes are very difficult to change. A person’s attitudes fit into a pattern, and changing one attitude may require making many difficult adjustments. It is easier for a company to create products that are compatible with existing attitudes than to change the attitudes toward their products. There are exceptions, of course, where the high cost of trying to change attitudes may pay off.