Theories of Learning

BEHAVIOURAL LEARNING THEORIES
1. Focus on stimulus-response connections
2. Known as the 'Black Box'
  1. Emphasises the observable aspects of behaviour.
    1. The observable aspects consists of things that go into the box (The stimuli or events perceived from the outside world) and things that come out of the box (the responses or reactions to these stimuli).
3. CLASSIC CONDITIONING: A stimulus that elicits a response is paired with another stimulus that initially does not elicit a response on its own.
  1. Over time, this second stimulus causes a similar response because it is associated with the first stimulus.
  2. Responses controlled by the autonomic (e.g. salivation) and nervous (e.g. eye blink) system.
  3. Focuses on olfactory cues that induce hunger, thirst or sexual.
  4. When the cues are consistently paired with conditioned paired with conditioned stimuli, such as brand names, consumers may learn to feel hungry, thirsty or aroused later exposed.
  5. CLASSIC CONDITIONING ISSUES
    1. Repetition: Increases learning. More Exposure - Increased Brand Awareness, When Exposure decreases, EXTINCTION occurs. Too MUCH exposure leads to advertising wear out.
    2. STIMULUS GENERALIZATION - The tendency of stimuli similar to a Conditioned Stimulus to evoke similar conditioned responses. E.G. Family Branding, Product line extensions and Look-alike packaging.
    3. STIMULUS DISCRIMINATION- Occurs when a stimulus similar to a CS is not followed by an Unconditioned stimulus. In these situations, reactions are weakened and will soon disappear. Part of the learning process involves making a response to some stimuli but not to other, similar stimuli. Manufactures of well-established brands commonly urge consumers not to buy 'cheap imitations' because the result will not be what they expect.
4. INSTRUMENTAL CONDITIONING (OR OPERANT CONDITIONING)- The individual learns to perform behaviours that product positive outcomes and to avoid those that yield negative outcomes.
  1. More closely associated with psychologist, who demonstrated the effects of instrumental conditioning by teaching animals to dance, pigeons to play ping-pong, and so-on, by systematically rewarding them for desired behaviours.
  2. RESPONSES are made deliberately to obtain a goal and may be more complex. The desired behaviours may be learned over a period of time, as intermediate actions are rewarded in a process called shaping.
    1. E.G - The owner of a new shop may award prizes to shoppers just for coming in, hoping that over time they will continue to drop in and eventually buy something.
  3. FOUR TYPES OF REINFORCEMENT
    1. POSITIVE REINFORCEMENT - Positive event strengthens responses preceding occurrences.
    2. PUNISHMENT - Negative event weakens responses that are followed by negative outcome.
    3. EXTINCTION - Removal of positive event weakens responses preceding occurrences.
    4. NEGATIVE REINFORCEMENT - Removal of negative event strengthens responses that allow avoidance of negative outcomes.
    5. REINFORCEMENT SCHEDULE
      1. FIXED INTERVAL - (E.g. Seasonal sales) [ After a specified period has passed, the first response that is made brings the reward. Under such conditions, people tend to respond slowly immediately after being reinforced, but their responses speed up as the time for the next reinforcement approaches.
      2. VARIABLE INTERVAL - (e.g. secret shoppers) [The time that must pass before reinforcement is delivered varies around some average. Since the person does not know exactly when to expect the reinforcement, responses must be performed as a consistent rate.
      3. FIXED RATIO - (E.g. grocery-shopping receipt programmes) [Reinforcement occurs only after a fixed number of responses. This schedule motivates people to continue performing the same behaviour over and over again].
      4. VARIABLE RATIO - (e.g. slot casino machines) The person is reinforced after a certain number of responses but they do not know how many responses are required. People in such situations tend to respond at very high steady rates, and this type of behaviour is very difficult to extinguish.
COGNITIVE THEORIES : Occurs as a result of mental processes. In contrast to behavioural theories of learning, cognitive learning theory stresses the importance of internal mental processes.
1. Focus on consumers as problems solvers who learn when they observe.
  1. On-going process - Learn what we do not try. Can be direct or indirect.
2. Observing others behaviour.
  1. ATTENTION - The consumer focuses on a model's behaviour.
    1. RETENTION - The consumer retains this behaviour in memory
      1. PRODUCTION PROCESSES - The consumer has the ability to perform the behaviour.
        MOTIVATIONAL - A situation arises wherein the behaviour is useful to the consumer.
        OBSERVATIONAL LEARNING - The consumer acquires and performs the behaviour earlier demonstrated by a model.
3. Processes information about brands to retain them in memory.
  1. External Inputs
    1. ENCODING - Information is placed in memory.
      1. STORAGE - Information is retained in memory.
        RETRIEVAL - Information stored in memory is found as needed
OBSERVATIONAL LEARNING - Occurs when people watch the actions of other and note the reinforcements they receive for their behaviours.
1. A complex process:
  1. People store these observations in memory as they accumulate knowledge, perhaps using this information at a later point to guide their own behaviours.
  2. Imitating the behaviour of others is called modelling.
    1. Four conditions must be met.
      1. 1. The consumer's attention must be directed to the appropriate model that, for reasons of attractiveness, competence, status or similarity, it is desirable to emulate.
      2. 2. The consumer must remember what is said or done by the model. (Retention)
      3. 3. The consumer must convert this information into actions. (Production processes).
      4. 4. The consumer must be motivated to perform these actions (Motivation).
MEANING
1. NARRATIVE - Marketers are using stories to talk to consumers. A consumer may process a stimulus simply in terms of its SENSORY MEANING (such as colour and shape). When this occurs the meaning may be activated when the person sees a picture of the stimulus.
2. We may experience a sense of familiarity on seeing an ad for a new snack food we recently tasted.
3. SEMANTIC MEANING - Refers to abstract, symbolic associations. E.g. Rich people eat particular types of food and champagne.
4. EPISODIC MEMORIES - Those that relate to events that are personally relevant, such as Mario's Strong (more likely to be in long term memory).
  1. A person's motivation to retain these memories by focusing on experiences shared by many people.
  2. Couples often have 'their song' that reminds them of their first date or wedding.
5. MEMORY SYSTEMS
  1. SENSORY MEMORY (Temporary storage of sensory information).
    1. ATTENTION - Information that passes through as attentional gate is transferred to short term memory.
      1. SHORT-TERM MEMORY - Brief storage of information currently being used.
        ELABORATIVE REHEARSAL - information subjected to elaborate rehearsal or deep processing, is transferred to long-term memory.
        Long-Term Memory - Relatively permanent storage of information
STORING OF INFORMATION IN MEMORY
1. Activation Models of Memory
  1. The more effort it takes to process information, the more likely it is that information will be placed will be placed in long-term memory.
2. Knowledge Structures - Storage units, that can be thought of as complex spiders' webs filled with pieces of data.
  1. Information is placed into nodes, which are connected by associative links within structures.
    1. Pieces of information that are seen as similar in some way are chunked together under some more abstract category.
      1. New, incoming information is interpreted to be consistent with the structure already in place.
        According to the hierarchal processing model, a message processed in a bottom-up fashion: Processing begins at a very basic level and is subject to increasingly complex processing operations that require greater cognitive capacity.
3. Spreading Activation
  1. A meaning can be activated indirectly: energy spread across nodes at varying levels of abstraction.
    1. As one node is activated, other nodes associated with it also begin to be triggered.
      1. Meaning thus spreads across the network, bringing up concepts including competing brands and relevant attributes that are used to form attitudes towards the brand.
LEVELS OF KNOWLEDGE
1. Knowledge is coded at different levels of abstraction and complexity.
2. Nodes are combined into a large unit, called a proposition (also known as a belief).
  1. A proposition links two nodes together to form a more complex meaning, which can serve as a single chunk of information.
    1. A schema is a cognitive framework that is developed through experience.
UNDERSTANDING WHEN WE REMEMBER
1. STATE-DEPENDENT RETRIEVAL - [More likely to remember if mood is in the right way. A process termed state-dependent retrieval; people are better able to access information if their internal state is the same at the time of recall as it was when the information was learned.
  1. MOOD CONGRUENCE EFFECT - Underscores the desirability of matching a consumer's mood at the time of purchase when planning exposure to marketing communications.
    1. A consumer is more likely to recall an ad, for example, if their mood or level of arousal at the time of exposure is similar to that in the purchase environment
2. FAMILIARITY AND RECALL
  1. Basic goal of marketers who are trying to create and maintain awareness of their products.
    1. A highlighting effect, where the order in which consumers learn about brands determines the strength of association between these brands and their attributes.
3. SALIENCE AND THE "VON RESTORFF" EFFECT
  1. The salience of a brand refers to its prominence or level of activation in memory.
    1. Stimuli that stand out in contrast to their environment are more likely to command attention, which in turn, increases the likelihood that they will be recalled.
4. PICTORIAL VERSUS VERBAL CUES
  1. Some evidence for the superiority of visual memory over verbal memory, but this advantage is unclear because it is more difficult to measure recall of pictures.
  2. However, the available data indicate that information presented in pictorial form is more likely to be recognised later.
MEASURING MEMORY FOR MARKETING STIMULI
1. RECOGNITION VERSUS RECALL
  1. Recognition tests, subjects are shown ads one at a time and asked if they have seen them before.
  2. Recall tests ask consumers to produce independently previously acquired information and then perform a recognition test on it.
2. PROBLEMS WITH MEMORY MEASURES
  1. RESPONSE BIAS [Results obtained from a measuring instrument are not necessarily due to what is being measured, but rather to something else about the instrument.
    1. MEMORY LAPSES - Omitting, Averaging and Telescoping.
THE MARKETING POWER OF NOSTALGIA
1. NOSTALGIA - Describes a bittersweet emotion where we view the past with both sadness and longing.
  1. Valued possessions can evoke thoughts about prior events on several dimensions, including sensory experiences, friends and loved ones, and breaking away from parents or formers partners.
2. RETRO Brand

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	Created by Crogers almost 11 years ago