Consumer Learning

Chapter 7
 Learning
• Learning the acquisition of knowledge or skills
through study, experience, or being taught.
• Not all learning is deliberately sought. Though
much learning is intentional (i.e., it is acquired
as the result of a search for information), a
great deal of learning is incidental, acquired
by accident or without much effort.
 Consumer Learning
• The process by which individuals acquire the
purchase and consumption knowledge and
experience that they apply to future related
behavior
• Marketers must teach consumers:
– where to buy
– how to use
– how to maintain
– how to dispose of products
 Elements of Consumer Learning
• Motivation: Unfulfilled needs leads to motivation, and
motivation leads to learning
- EX: You lost your mobile phone, which motivates you to
buy a phone, which leads you to learn about the phones
available in the marketplace in your price range and
specification through information search
• Cues: Cues are stimuli that direct motivated behavior
- EX: You walked past a restaurant and smell some
unknown food scent, which may motivate you to go inside
the restaurant to check and learn what type of food it is
 Elements of Consumer Learning
• Response: Response is an individual’s reaction to a drive or
cue.
• Learning can occur even when responses are not obvious.
- EX: You may not go inside the restaurant to learn what food
it is, but you may develop a favorable image (Learning) of the
food in your mind
• Reinforcement: Reinforcement is the reward—the pleasure,
enjoyment, and benefits—that the consumer receives after
buying and using a product or service.
- EX: You decide to try that unknown food, and after eating
you learn that it does not go with your taste.
Two Major Learning Theories
 Behavioral Learning Theories
• Classical Conditioning
• Instrumental Conditioning
• Modeling or Observational
Learning
 Classical Conditioning

• Classical conditioning is viewed as a “knee-

jerk” (or automatic) response that builds up
through repeated exposure and reinforcement.
• A behavioral learning theory according to
which a stimulus is paired with another
stimulus that elicits a known response that
serves to produce the same response when
used alone.
 Classical Conditioning
• Ivan Pavlov, a Russian physiologist, developed
the concept of classical conditioning.
• Pavlov sounded a bell and then immediately
applied a meat paste to the dogs’ tongues,
which caused them to salivate. After a number
of such pairings, the dogs responded the same
way—that is, they salivated—to the bell alone
as they did to the meat paste.
 Classical Conditioning
• Unconditioned stimulus a stimulus occurs naturally in
response to given circumstances
• Unconditioned response is an unlearned response
that occurs naturally in reaction to the unconditioned
stimulus
• conditioned stimulus is a stimulus that became
associated with a particular event or feeling as a result
of repetition
• Conditioned response is a response to conditioned
stimulus
Classical Conditioning
 Strategic Applications of Classical
Conditioning

• Repetition
• Stimulus generalization
• Stimulus discrimination
 Repetition

• Repetition is the key to forming associations between

brands and fulfillment of needs.
• Lifeboy soap (conditioned stimulus) and good health
protection (unconditioned stimulus) are paired and
repeated over the years. As a result many consumers
associate the word “Lifeboy” with health protection.
• Repetition also slows the pace of forgetting
• However, too much repetition may result in advertising
wearout. marketers reduce it by using different ads
expressing the same message or advertising themes
 Stimulus generalization

• Responding the same way to slightly different

stimuli is called stimulus generalization.
• Helps “me-too” products to succeed (EX: “me-
too” products that followed “All Time”’s
packaging strategies.
• Useful in:
– product extensions
– family branding
– licensing
 Stimulus discrimination

• Stimulus discrimination, the opposite of stimulus

generalization, is the selection of a specific stimulus from
among similar stimuli.
• EX: Product differentiation positioning strategy. The core
objective of this type positioning is to “teach” consumers
to discriminate (or distinguish) among similar products
(i.e., similar stimuli) and form a unique image for a brand
in their minds. Therefore, the objective of marketers’
persuasive messages is to convey a brand’s unique
benefits effectively and differentiate it from competition.
 Instrumental (operant) Conditioning

• Instrumental conditioning (or operant

conditioning) is based on the notion that
learning occurs through a trial-and-error
process, with habits formed as a result of
rewards received for certain responses or
behaviors.
 Instrumental (operant) Conditioning
• Like classical conditioning, instrumental conditioning
requires a link between a stimulus and a response.
• However, in instrumental conditioning, the stimulus
that results in the most rewarded response is the one
that is learned.
• EX: after visiting stores, consumers know which stores
carry the type of clothing they prefer at prices they
can afford to pay. Once they find a store that carries
clothing that meets their needs, they are likely to
patronize it to the exclusion of other stores.
 Instrumental (operant) Conditioning
• B. F. Skinner constructed the model of instrumental
conditioning. According to Skinner, most learning
occurs in environments where individuals are
“rewarded” for choosing an appropriate behavior.
• Instrumental conditioning suggests that consumers
learn by means of a trial-and-error process in which
some purchase behaviors result in more favorable
outcomes (i.e., rewards) than others. A favorable
experience is the instrument of teaching the
individual to repeat a specific behavior.
 Instrumental (operant) Conditioning

• Like Pavlov, Skinner developed his model of

learning by working with animals. Small
animals, such as rats and pigeons, were placed
in his “Skinner box.” If they behaved as
Skinner desired—such as pressing a particular
lever or pecking keys—he rewarded them with
food pellets.
A Model of Instrumental Conditioning
 Reinforcing Behavior
• Skinner distinguished between two types of
reinforcement (Positive reinforcement and
Negative reinforcement) that influence the
likelihood that a response will be repeated.
• Positive reinforcement, rewards a particular
behavior (ex: eating ice-cream is fun)
• Negative reinforcement is the removal of an
unpleasant stimulus (ex: taking medicine cure
illness)
 Extinction and Forgetting
• Extinction occurs when a learned response is no longer
reinforced and the link between the stimulus and the expected
reward breaks down. When consumers become unsatisfied
with a service (e.g., at a restaurant), the link between the
stimulus (i.e., the restaurant) and expected satisfaction is no
longer reinforced and the consumers won’t come back.
Behavior that is not reinforced becomes “unlearned.”
• Forgetting is often related to the passage of time, and thus is
also called “decay. “ Marketers overcome forgetting by
contacting customers who stopped buying their products and
giving them incentives aimed at persuading the customers to
start buying their products again.
Instrumental Conditioning and Marketing

• Customer Satisfaction and Retention

• Reinforcement Schedules
• Shaping
• Massed versus Distributed Learning
 Customer Satisfaction and Retention

• Marketers reinforce customer satisfaction by

consistently providing high quality.
• Marketers must provide the best value for the
money and simultaneously avoid raising
consumers’ expectations beyond what the
products can deliver.
 Reinforcement Schedules

• Providing additional rewards during transaction

(ex: free welcome drink at a restaurant)
• Continuous reinforcement, a reward is provided
after each transaction
• Fixed ratio reinforcement schedule provides
reinforcement every nth time the product or
service is purchased
• Variable ratio reinforcement schedule rewards
consumers on a random basis
 Shaping

• Reinforcement performed before the desired

consumer behavior actually takes place is called
shaping.
• Shaping increases the probability that certain
desired consumer behavior will occur.
• EX: Car dealers recognize that to sell new-model
cars, they must first encourage people to visit
the showrooms and test-drive the cars. They
hope that the test drive will result in a sale.
 Massed versus Distributed Learning

• Timing has an important influence on consumer

learning
• Should a learning schedule be spread out over a
period of time, which is termed distributed
learning, or should it be “bunched up” all at
once, which is called massed learning?
• Massed advertising produces more initial
learning, whereas a distributed schedule usually
results in learning that persists longer.
 Observational Learning
• Observational learning (or modeling) is the process through
which individuals learn behavior by observing the behavior of
others and the consequences of such behavior. For this type of
learning to occur, reinforcement must take place.
• EX: The number of ride sharing users (uber/pathao) are
increasing as non users observes how much convenient it is for
users for transportation
• Marketers must communicate social acceptance and favorable
consequences of using their product/service to the customers.
• EX: If a teenager sees an ad that depicts social success as the
outcome of using a certain brand of shampoo, she will want to
buy it
 Cognitive Learning
• Cognitive learning, consists of mental processing of
data/information rather than instinctive responses to
stimuli.
• It is the systematic evaluation of information and
alternatives needed to solve a recognized but
unfilled need or unsolved problem.
• Consumers with higher cognitive abilities acquire
more product information and consider more
product attributes and alternatives than consumers
with lesser ability.
 Cognitive Learning
• Cognitive learning occurs when a person has a
goal and must search for and process data in
order to make a decision or solve a problem.
• EX: a consumer looking to purchase a digital
camera (the goal) must choose among many
brands and models (problem solving).
 Information Processing
• The components of information processing
are:
- Storing
- Retaining
- Retrieving information
 Storing
• The human memory is the center of
information processing.
• Information processing occurs in stages and in
three sequential “storehouses” where
information is kept:
- sensory store
- short-term store
- long-term store
 Sensory Store
• The sensory store is the mental “space” in the human
mind where sensory input lasts for just a second or two.
• If it is not processed immediately, it is lost.
• The brain automatically and subconsciously “tags” all
information with a value, either positive or negative; if
positive, it is processed
• For marketers, this means that although it is relatively
easy to get information into the consumer’s sensory
store, it is difficult to make a lasting impression.
 Short-term Store
• The short-term store is where information is processed
and held for just a brief period.
• If information in the short-term store undergoes the
process known as rehearsal, which is the silent, mental
repetition of information, it is then transferred to the long-
term store.
• The transfer process takes from 2 to 10 seconds. If
information is not rehearsed and transferred, it is lost in
about 30 seconds or less. The amount of information that
can be held in short-term storage is limited to about four
or five items.
 Long-term Store
• The long-term store is the mental “space”
where information is retained for extended
periods of time
• Although it is possible to forget something
within a few minutes after the information
reaches long-term storage, it is more common
for data in long-term storage to last for days,
weeks, or even years.
 Information Retention
• Information does not merely remain in long-
term storage waiting to be retrieved.
• It is constantly organized and reorganized, as
new chunks of information are received and
new links among those chunks are created.
• EX: Service upgrades (Banks, Telecom etc.)
 Retrieval
• Retrieval is the process by which people
recover information from the long-term store;
it is frequently triggered by external cues.
• EX: When we see a product in the store TV, we
automatically retrieve the applicable
information our brains have stored (may be
from past experience of using the product or
we have seen it in ads)
 Application of cognitive learning
• Problem solution based advertising
• EX: - out of phone credit, use bKash to
instantly recharge
- toothache, use sensodyne rapid relief
toothpaste for instant pain relief
 Consumer Involvement
• All purchases, especially routine ones, do not
require complex and extensive information
processing and evaluation.
• This can be explained by consumer
involvement.
• Consumer involvement is the degree of
personal relevance that the product or
purchase holds for the consumer.
 Consumer Involvement
• High-involvement purchases are very important to the
consumer (e.g., in terms of perceived risk) and thus
provoke extensive problem solving and information
processing (EX: Cars, Mobiles)
• Low-involvement purchases are not very important,
hold little relevance, have little perceived risk, and
provoke limited information processing (EX: Bread, Egg)
• Some products/services varies as high/low involvement
depending on the individual (EX: Shampoo)
 Application of consumer involvement

• Marketers must provide adequate information

in appropriate places such as product label,
packaging, and ads for high-involvement
products
• Marketers may focus on product
differentiation in low-involvement products.