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Learning and Memory
Chapter 3
Learning Objectives
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How we (and consumers) learn
Types of learning
Main characteristics of learning
Using learning in marketing strategies
Importance of brand image and product
positioning
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Learning
• Learning refers to any change in the
content or organisation of long-term
memory
• Consumer behaviour is largely learned
behaviour
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The Learning Process
• Products as reminders of life experiences
• Products + memory = brand equity/loyalty
• Learning: a relatively permanent change in
behavior caused by experience
– Incidental learning
– Ongoing process
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The Learning Process
• Incidental Learning:
– Casual, unintentional acquisition of
knowledge
• Learning is an Ongoing Process:
– Constantly being revised
– Can be either simple association (logo
recognition) or complex cognitive activity
(writing an essay)
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Learning as a Key to Consumer Behaviour
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Learning Results from Information
Processing and Causes Changes in Memory
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Involvement and Learning
• Learning under high-involvement
conditions
– Consumer has a high motivation to learn
• Learning under low-involvement conditions
– Most consumer learning is in a lowinvolvement context
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Learning Theories in High- and Low-Involvement Situations
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Types of Learning
Behavioural learning Theories
– Conditioning
• Classical conditioning
• Operant conditioning
Cognitive learning
– Iconic rote learning
– Vicarious learning/modelling
– Reasoning
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Behavioral Learning Theories
• Assume that learning takes place as the result of
responses to external events.
• View is represented by two major approaches to
learning:
– 1) Classical Conditioning
– 2) Instrumental Conditioning
• People’s experiences shaped by feedback they
receive as they go through life
• Actions result in rewards and punishments,
which influences future responses to similar
situations.
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Behavioral Learning Theories
• Learning = responses to external events
– “Black box”
– Observable behavior
• Classical conditioning & instrumental
conditioning
Stimulus
Consumer
Figure 3.1
Response
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Conditioning
Conditioning is based on the association of
a stimulus (information) with a response
(behaviour or feeling)
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Classical Conditioning
• Establishing a relationship between
stimulus and response to bring about the
learning of the same response to a
different stimulus
• Most common in low-involvement
situations
• Learning is more often a feeling or
emotion than information
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Consumer Learning through Classical
Conditioning
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How Affective Response Leads
to Learning
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Classical Conditioning
• Ivan Pavlov
• CS + UCS = response
– Over time: CS =
response
• Brand names as CS
– Credit card as CS
• Music, humor, imagery
• CS first, then UCS
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Classical Conditioning (Cont’d)
• Repetition of exposure
– Type of medium used
– Extinction
– Beware of…
• Advertising wear out
• Frequent product encounters
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Classical Conditioning (Cont’d)
• Stimulus Generalization
– Halo effect
• Application
– Brand equity
– Brand leverage
– Family branding, product line extensions,
licensing, look-alike packaging
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Example of Stimulus Generalisation to Launch a New
Product
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Classical Conditioning (Cont’d)
• Stimulus Discrimination
It occurs when UCS does not follow a
stimulus similar to a CS
• Application
– Brand positioning
• Unique attributes of brand
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Instrumental Conditioning
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Trial precedes liking
– Product sampling is an example of this type of learning
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The Process of Shaping in Purchase
Behaviour
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Instrumental Conditioning
• Occurs as the individual learns to perform
behaviors that produce positive outcomes
and avoid behaviors that yield negative
outcomes
• Shaping
– The desired behavior may be learned over a
period of time, as intermediate actions are
rewarded in a process called shaping.
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Instrumental Conditioning
• Behaviors = positive outcomes or negative
outcomes
– Deliberate behavior to obtain a goal
• Positive reinforcement
– Frequency marketing, thank you letters,
rebates, follow-up phone calls
• Negative reinforcement
• Punishment
• Extinction
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Instrumental Conditioning (Cont’d)
• Reinforcement schedules include…
– Fixed-interval (seasonal sales)
– Variable-interval (secret shoppers)
– Fixed-ratio (grocery-shopping receipt
programs)
– Variable-ratio (slot machines)
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Applications of Instrumental
Conditioning Principles
• Reinforcement of Consumption:
– Thank you
– Rebates
– Follow-up phone calls
• Frequency Marketing:
– Reinforces regular purchases by giving them
rewards with values that increase along with
the amount purchased
• Frequent flyer miles
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Cognitive Learning Theory
• People = problem solvers
• Active use of information to master
environment
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Cognitive Learning
• Iconic rote learning
– Association between two or more concepts in
the absence of conditioning
• A substantial amount of low-involvement learning
involves iconic rote learning
• Achieved by repeated advertising messages
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Cognitive Learning (cont.)
• Vicarious learning/modelling
– Observe others' behaviour and adjust their
own accordingly
• common in both high-involvement and lowinvolvement situations
• Reasoning
– most complex form of cognitive learning
• most high-involvement decisions generate some
reasoning
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Observational Learning
• We watch others and note
reinforcements they
receive for behaviors
– Vicarious learning
– Socially desirable
models/celebrities who use
or do not use their products
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Observational Learning (Cont’d)
• Modeling: imitating others’ behavior
ATTENTION
RETENTION
Figure 3.3 (Abridged)
PRODUCTION
PROCESSES
MOTIVATION
OBSERVATIONAL
LEARNING
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Applications of Cognitive Learning Principles
• Consumers learn vicariously by seeing others
receive reinforcement for their behaviors.
• Marketers can reinforce or punish consumers
indirectly by showing what happens to desirable
models who do or do not use their products.
• Consumers’ evaluations of models are not
limited to stimulus-response connections.
– Attractiveness can be based on several
components (e.g. physical attractiveness, expertise,
similarity to the evaluator)
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Memory
• Memory is the total accumulation of
prior learning experiences
• Sensory Memory:
– Very temporary storage of information we receive from our
senses
• Short-term memory
– working memory
– the role of images, sight, sound, smell, taste and tactile
situations
• Long-term memory
– unlimited permanent storage
– schematic memory
• linking to ‘chunks’ of information
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The Role of Memory in Learning
• Memory
– A process of acquiring and storing information
such that it will be available when needed.
• Stages of Memory
– Encoding stage
• Information entered in a recognizable way
– Storage stage
• Knowledge integrated into what is already there
and warehoused
– Retrieval stage
• The person accesses the desired information
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Role of Memory in Learning
• Memory: acquiring information and storing
it over time so that it will be available when
needed
• Information-processing approach
– Mind = computer & data = input/output
EXTERNAL
INPUTS
ENCODING
STORAGE
Figure 3.4 (Abridged)
RETRIEVAL
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The Memory Process
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Figure 3.4
Memory and Advertising
This Brazilian ad illustrates that external memory aids like
Post-Its can help us to remember many of the details of
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modern life.
Encoding
• The way we encode information can help
us retain it later
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Encoding Information for Later Retrieval
• Types of meaning:
– Sensory meaning (e.g. color or shape)
– Sense of familiarity (e.g. seeing a food that we have
tasted)
– Semantic meaning: Symbolic associations (e.g. rich
people drink champagne)
• Personal relevance:
– Episodic memories: Relate to events that are
personally relevant
– Flashbulb memories: Especially vivid associations
– Narrative: An effective way of persuading people to
construct a mental representation of the information
that they are viewing
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Memory Systems
SENSORY
MEMORY
SHORT-TERM
MEMORY
ATTENTION
LONG-TERM
MEMORY
ELABORATIVE
REHEARSAL
Figure 3.5 (Abridged)
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Chunking
• Informational unit in short-term memory
(STM)
– Brand name
– Area code of telephone number
– Optimal size for retrieval
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Storing Information in Memory (cont.)
• Associative Networks:
– Contains many bits of related information organized
according to some set of relationships
– Knowledge structures: Complex “spider webs” filled with
pieces of data
– Node: A concept related to a category. Knowledge structure
is stored on nodes.
– An associative network is developed as links form
between nodes.
– Proposition ( belief): A larger unit of meaning (i.e., formed
by combinations of nodes)
– Schema: A cognitive framework (comprised of
propositions) developed through experience
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• Script: A type of schema consisting of a sequence
An Associative Network for Perfumes
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Figure 3.6
Storing Information in Memory (conc.)
• Levels of Knowledge:
– Knowledge is coded at different levels of
abstraction and complexity.
Nodes
Proposition
Chunk
Schema
Script
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Storing Information in Memory (conc.)
• Spreading Activation:
– A process which allows consumers to shift
back and forth between levels of meaning
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Brand Specific
Ad-Specific
Brand Identification
Product Category
Evaluative Reactions
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Retrieval for Purchase Decisions
• Retrieving information often requires
appropriate factors & cues:
– Physiological factors
– Situational factors
• Consumer attention; pioneering brand; descriptive
brand names
– Viewing environment (continuous activity;
commercial order in sequence)
– Post-experience advertising effects
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Retrieving Information for
Purchase Decisions
• Factors Influencing Retrieval:
– Physiological Factors (e.g. age)
– Situational Factors:
• Pioneering brand: First brand to enter a market. Is
generally easier to retrieve from memory.
• Descriptive brand names easier to recall than names that
do no provide cues to what the product is.
– Viewing environment: Commercials shown first in a
series of ads are recalled better than those shown
last.
– Postexperience advertising effects:
• When consumers confuse recently viewed ads with their
own experiences.
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Retrieving Information for
Purchase Decisions (cont.)
• State-Dependent Retrieval:
– (a.k.a. mood congruence effect) A process by
which consumers are better able to access info if
their mood is the same at the time of their recall as
when the info was learned.
– A few marketing researchers use hypnosis to
dredge up past memories of experiences with
products.
• Familiarity and Recall:
– Prior familiarity enhances recall.
• Salience and Recall:
– Salience: The prominence or level of activation of
stimuli in memory
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– Von Restorff Effect: Any technique that increases
the novelty of a stimulus also improves recall.
Pictorial versus Verbal Cues
• There is some evidence
for the superiority of
visual memory over
verbal memory.
• Pictorial ads may
enhance recall, but do
not necessarily improve
comprehension.
• How many of these Ad
icons can you
remember from the
picture alone?
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Factors Influencing Forgetting
• Decay:
– Structural changes in the brain produced by
learning simply go away.
• Retroactive Interference:
– Consumers forget stimulus-response associations
when new responses to the same or similar stimuli
are learned.
• Proactive Interference:
– As new responses are learned, a stimulus loses its
effectiveness in retrieving the old response.
• Part-list Cueing Effect:
– When only a portion of the items in a category are
presented to consumers, the omitted items are not
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as easily recalled.