CHAPTER 6:

LEARNING AND MEMORY

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OBJECTIVES after studying this chapter, you will be able to . . .

1.) Know how classical conditioning works in advertising

2.) Understand how operant conditioning works in sales promotion.
3.) Identify misleading ads that encourage consumers to form incorrect inferences.
4.) Define the seven sins of memory

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 1. The importance of Learning and Memory
Learning, as it pertains to consumer behavior, it is the process of acquiring new information and
knowledge about products and services for application to future behavior. As learning increases, the
amount of knowledge about products and services stored in customer’s memory also increases.
Memory enables past experiences and learning to influence current behavior. Without memory, we
cannot physically function in society. People often underestimate how important memory is for
everyday behavior; most people don’t fully appreciate how essential memory is until this function is
seriously impaired as a result of health conditions such as Alzheimer’s, Korsakov’s syndrome, or
serious head trauma.
Learning changes the way consumers think about and use products. The more consumers learn
about a product category, the more likely they are to use new words and phrases to describe their
consumption experiences, and they more likely they are to focus on product attributes that didn’t
seem as important when they first tried the product. In other words, learning enriches consumer’s
experiences with products and services, and of course, influences their potential future behavior
related to the product.
 1. Types of Learning
People learn in many ways. How people learn has been studied extensively in medicine,
psychology, sociology, and education, and a number of learning theories have been developed.
Two of these theories, classical conditioning and operant conditioning.

1.2 a Classical Conditioning (or Pavlovian Conditioning) is a learning theory centered on creating
associations between meaningful objects or ideas (or what research call stimuli) to elicit desired
responses.
In a consumer behavior setting, advertisers use a wide variety of meaningful unconditioned
stimuli, including catchy music, sexy models, likable celebrities, cute animals, pretty scenery, and so
on. These positive unconditioned stimuli produced positive unconditioned responses, such as
amusement, joy, happiness, attraction, etc. Negative unconditioned stimuli produce negative
unconditioned responses or feelings. The brand serves as the conditioned stimuli (just like the bell in
Pavlov’s experiment). By pairing meaningful unconditioned stimuli with the brand, the advertisers
hope to condition consumers to feel positively about the brand.
1.2b Operant Conditioning In classical conditioning, the stimulus precedes the response, but in
operant conditioning (or instrumental conditioning), the stimulus follows the response. Positive
reinforcement, or the presence of a reward, increases the probability of a response, while negative
reinforcement, or the absence of punishment, also increases the probability of a response.
Extinction, or the absence of a reward, decreases the probability of response. The presence of
punishment also decreases the probability of a response. Learning via operant conditioning is faster
under conditions of continuous reinforcement, or when reinforcement occurs every time the
desired response occurs, However, learning via operant conditioning is more persistent under
conditions of partial reinforcement, or when reinforcement occurs only some of the times the
desired response occurs.

Rewards used in marketing include coupons, bonus points, rebates, and prizes given to consumers
who buy your product. Rewards increases the probability of repeat purchase. Operant conditioning
can also be used to influence consumers who do not currently use your product. For example, a
retailer may first reward non-users to visit the mall where the store is located by offering a free
fashion show. Then the retailer may encourage non-users to visit the store by offering the door
prize, by offering a discount and reward them by offering frequent-user bonus points for each
purchase.
 1. Comprehension and Miscomprehension
Comprehending or understanding information requires relating new information presented in the environment to
old information stored in memory. Because new information is typically incomplete, consumers must form
inferences to fill in missing details to make sense out of the new information.
As comprehension increase, memory performance also increases. It is difficult to remember meaningless
information. This is why professors use memory tests (e.g., multiple choice exam, fill-in-the-blank questions, short
essay questions). Consumers use background knowledge to fill in missing details, ads can mislead consumers by
presenting claims that are literally true but figuratively false. Claims stating that a product may be effective, or is
more effective, or is recommended by experts often leads consumers see an ad stating.
Visuals images can also contain false implications. For example, a Milky Way ad transformation a glass of milk
into a candy bar, implying that the bar is as nutritious as a glass of milk. A Mattel advertisement uses extreme close-
ups and camera angles that make Hot Wheels toy cars appear much faster than they actually are. A Campbell’s soup
ad shows a bowl of soup with meat, potatoes, and vegetables bursting above the broth level.
Misleading advertising practices are unfair because consumers must form inferences and make assumptions to
comprehend advertising claims. Sometimes the Federal Trade Commission (FTC) orders advertisers to air
corrective advertising that states that the previous ad was misleading, as in the famous Listerine case. A Listerine
ad stated that Listerine kills germs that cause colds, which simply was not true. Nevertheless, extensive research has
shown that corrective advertising is typically ineffective because consumers have difficulty changing their beliefs
dramatically, even when they realize that those beliefs are wrong.
1.3a Memory
Memory researchers often use a computer metaphor to explain how memory works. A computer has a
hard drive that can store a large number of inactive files. A computer also allows users to retrieve a file
from the hard drive and bring it into active memory so the file can be processed. Similarly, people have a
long-term memory system that stores a large amount of inactive data or knowledge. To use such
knowledge, however, people must retrieve a file from long-term memory and bring in into short-term
memory to process it further. All thinking and reasoning occurs in short-term memory, but only a small
amount of information can be held in short-term memory at any given time (7 plus or minus 2 chunks or
units). If this information is not used, it is lost less than 18 seconds later (hence, the name “short-term
memory”). By contrast, long term memory appears to store an unlimited amount of information for a
long period of time. Nevertheless, three different types of forgetting can occur in long-term memory:
1. Original information is not maintained
2. New information is not successfully stored in memory
3. New knowledge overrides existing information, or vice-versa
Information held in long-term memory can also be distorted or changed over time. Furthermore,
sometimes consumers can’t forget things that they’d prefer to forget. We discuss hoe consumers forget
information in the next section.
 1.4 The Seven Sins of Memory

Although memory influences nearly every thought and action we take,

memory can also be fallible. There are seven basic mistakes or “sins” of
memory: transience, absent-mindedness, blocking, misattribution,
suggestibility, bias and persistence. The first three sins refer to three
different types of forgetting. The second three refer to three different
types of distortion. Persistence refers to the inability to forget things one
wants to forget.
1.4a Transience refers to forgetting over time. If you don’t use
it, you lose it. If knowledge is not used for a long period of
time, information loss can occur. Recently process information
is more accessible or easy to retrieve, relative to the passage of 1.4c Blocking forgetting frequently occurs
time. because the information one is trying to retrieve
is temporarily inaccessible as a result of
blocking or interference from related
1.4b Absent-Mindedness refers to forgetting as a result of
information. Sometimes people know they
shallow or superficial processing of information during
know the answer to a question, but they cannot
encoding or retrieval. Encoding refers to attention,
quite put their finger on it. This is known as the
comprehension, and the transference of information from short-
tip-of-the-tongue effect. The tip-of-the-tongue
term memory to long term memory. Retrieval refers to the
effect shows that forgetting can occur even
transference of information from long-term memory to short-
when the answer to a question is stored
term memory. Lapses of attention or effort during encoding or
somewhere in long-term memory.
retrieval can lead to forgetting.
1.4d Misattribution forgetting isn’t the only memory problem consumers encounter. Memory can also be distorted
from misattribution. Three different types of misattributions of confusions are possible.
1.source confusion
2. feelings of familiarity
3. false memories
Source confusion occurs when consumers remember reading a fact about a product but misremember where they
read it. Sometimes consumers believe that they read the information from a credible source (e.g., Consumer Reports),
but they actually read it from a noncredible source (e.g., National Enquirer). Sometimes consumers believes that the
conclusions they drew after reading a message about a product were actually stated in the message. In short, source
confusion can lead consumers to trust product information more than they should.
The second type of memory misattribution is the tendency to confuse feelings of familiarity with a wide variety of
possible judgments, including fame, confidence, liking, and truth. The more familiar a brand name seems, the more
famous and popular the brand seems to be.
The third type of memory misattribution is a false memory, or a tendency to remember items or events that never
happened.in a typical false memory false experiment, people study a list of words that are closely related to a non-
presented word. This occurs because it is easier to remember the gist or the general meaning of the presented words
than to remember the specific presented words themselves.
1.4e Suggestibility Misleading questions and suggestions can
also to lead memory distortion. For example, people who
witness an automobile accident remember different events when
they are asked. “How fast was the car going when it ran past the 1.4g Persistence Sometimes people can’t
stop sign?” versus “Hoe fast the car going when it ran past the forget things they want to forget.
yield sign?”. Advertising can also produce memory distortion. Traumatic events are often difficult to
For example, after tasting a brand orange juice, consumers are forget. Some songs and advertising jingles
more likely to misremember the orange juice as flavorful after get stuck in our heads. This is known as
seeing an ad suggesting that the product is flavorful than after earworm. Momentary distractions can
seeing no ad. Advertising can distort memory for past also lead people to think more about a
experiences with a product. topic they are trying not to think about.
The persistence of unwanted thoughts
can be frustrating, distracting, and
1.4f Bias Previously viewed advertising can also influence sometimes depressing.
what is learned from current product experiences. Advertising
influences consumers’ expectations, and expectations
subsequently color what consumers see. To the extent that the
product experiences are ambiguous or open to multiple
interpretations, expectations guide the interpretations of product
experiences.
Summary

Learning produces knowledge about products, and memory determines how

knowledge about products is increased and used. Association between unconditioned
and conditioned stimuli are learned via classical conditioning. Association between
responses and consequences are learned via operant conditioning. Associations are
the building blocks of knowledge stored in memory. Although memory influences
nearly all aspects of consumer behavior, most consumer underestimate the
importance of memory. The seven sins of memory are side effects of an otherwise
adaptive memory system. Despite these sins, memory enables consumer to perform
remarkably complex thinking, reasoning, and decision-making activities.
THE END. . .