Learning
and Memory
What is Learning?
A change in Behaviour
caused by experience.
What is Consumer learning?
Why is it important to understand
how consumer’s learn?
From a marketer’s perspective learning
becomes teaching
What do we want to teach them?
Learning
Theories
Behaviorism
Classical
Conditioning
Instrumental
Conditioning
Cognitive
Classical Conditioning
 learning occurs when a stimulus (unconditioned
stimulus UCS) elicits a response (unconditioned
response UCR)
 that is paired with another stimulus (conditioned
stimulus CS) that initially does not elicit a response
on its own
 but will cause a similar response (conditioned
response CR) over time because of its association
with the first stimulus.
Ivan Pavlov’s Classic Experiment
Before Conditioning
UCS (food
in mouth)
UCR
(salivation)
During Conditioning
Neutral
stimulus
(tone)
No
salivation
After Conditioning
UCS (food
in mouth)
Neutral
stimulus
(tone)
Slide 10
UCR
(salivation)
CS
(tone)
CR (salivation)
Applications of Classical Conditioning
• Applications: communications--advertising, public
relations, personal selling.
• Goal: identify powerful positive stimulus and associate
brand with it.
• Examples of powerful, emotion causing stimuli:
– beautiful, sexy people
– patriotic themes, religious symbols
– Music, beautiful scenes
– Also, negative stimuli can be associated with
competitors.
• Requires repetition to make the association stick
Credit card insignia may elicit spending responses
The bears (UCS) naturally
generate positive feelings
(UCR) towards them
Coke (CS) by itself and before
conditioning, does not, illicit
any positive feelings
But coke (CS) is associated with
the bears (UCS)
Later ( in the store) you have a
positive feeling towards coke
(CR)
The goal of advertisers is to get
the exposed person at the
grocery store to associate the
positive feeling they had for the
ad with the product
Event sponsorship
The sponsor (Bayer) wants the person viewing the event (UCS) to
project the positive feelings (UCR) they get from the event with
their product (CS); I.e. Bayer hopes the positive emotional feeling
will transfer to their product outside the sporting context
Positive emotional feeling toward the event can be intense
because the person has chosen to be exposed to the event.
What happens when the person’s favorite team loses?
Instrumental or Operant Conditioning
B.F. Skinner
Positive Reinforcement
Negative Reinforcement
Punishment
Reinforcements Schedules
Interval
 Fixed-Interval Reinforcement
 Variable-Interval Reinforcement
Ratio
 Fixed-Ratio Reinforcement
 Variable-Ratio Reinforcement
Frequency Marketing
Sperry & Hutchinson, 1896.
Consumer awareness of
supermarket savings clubs or
frequent-shopper programs
(increased in 1997 versus 1996
(72 percent versus 62 percent
respectively).
ADVANTAGES OF FREQUENT BUYER PROGRAMS
help to retain old customers and win new ones
lower marketing costs and build brands.
They generate increased frequency of visit, stimulate faster
purchase cycles, add value
make the sponsoring company stand out from the
competition.
They lock in consumer loyalty and make consumers
resistant to product or service promotions by competitors.
Effectiveness is easy to measure, and a valuable database is
put in place for future programs.
Suitability for frequency marketing programs
customers have an ongoing need for your product or service.
customers perceive little differentiation between your product or
service and your competitors
customers must consider your frequent buyer benefits to be valuable
and definitely worth working for
You must be willing to commit to the program long-term Frequent
buyer programs are not short-term. They require a long-term
commitment in order to work
The product or service must lend itself to easy collection of proofs of
purchase.
Can you afford the program? The rewards, tracking, regular
communication, and customer inquiries associated with the program
require significant time and monetary resources.
Do your competitors offer a frequency marketing program? If they do
but you do not, you may want to give serious consideration to a program.
Learning
Theories
Behaviourism
Classical
Conditioning
Instrumental
Conditioning
Cognitive
Reasoning
Observation
COGNITIVE LEARNING THEORY
• Observational Learning
• Reasoning
Applications of Cognitive Learning Principles
• Modelling
The Role of Memory in Learning
Stages
• Encoding
• Storage
• Retrieval
An Associative Network for Perfumes
Draw an associative network for Pepsi
Things to consider might include:
• specific brands
• a celebrity identified with Pepsi
• related activities
• related products
• where purchased
• packaging
• attributes
• concepts
• feelings
Nostalgia
Nearly 10% of ads use
Nostalgia
trend appears to have
begun in the 1980s, when
marketing campaigns began
to employ 1960s music
The baby boomers are
aging, entering a phase of life
when looking back is natural
“Every time I learn
something new, it pushes
some old stuff out of my
brain”
Forgetting
Recognition Versus Recall
• Recognition
remembering
when shown
•Recall:
remembering
without stimulus
1. Zoom Zoom Zoom
2. Just for the fun of it
Mazda
Diet Coke
3. Grab Life By The Horns
Dodge
4. Driven
Nissan
5. I did it my way
Viagra
6. The best a man can get."
Gillette
7. The ultimate driving machine
BMW
8. Engineered to be great cars
10. No More Tears
Chrysler
Visa
J & J Baby Shampoo
11. Always low prices.
Walmart
9. It's everywhere you want to be
12. Good to the last drop
Maxwell House
Advertising Recall as a function of Timing
and Number of Exposures (Zielske 1959)
70
1 exposure
/ week
for 13 weeks
60
50
13 exposures
at 4 -week intervals
40
%
30
20
10
0
25
week of the
50
year
How Can Marketers improve Memory
retention?
Repetition
• Repetition of a central theme with some variation
• KISS
• how many times should a consumer be exposed to
an ad before the advertising message is effective.
 Meaningful or more vivid material
 Material presented first (primacy) or last (recency) is
better retained than material presented in the middle