Learning and Memory

Why are we interested in marketing to understand the way people learn?

There is an easy answer when you look at the following examples (Ben-Gay aspirin and Frito-Lay Lemonade). One of the big reasons why these products never survived on the market is because their brand extensions in other product category than their original ones drastically failed. The main explanation of this failure is basically that consumers had learned so well and stored in their memory the very specific image of what these bands stand for that they could not see them as having any other meaning (i.e muscle relaxant for Ben Gay and chips for Frito Lay). So companies want to understand how consumers learn because if they know how you learn, it will be easier for them to try to convince you and to "teach" you how to behave with their products.

Theories of Learning

There are two major schools of learning, two major theories explaining the way we learn. The first theory is based on behavioural learning. In this approach, the way we learn is through behaviors. We are exposed to a stimulus at a specific time and then we're going to act and the way we learn is basically through repetition of the same behaviour every time we are in the same situation. In this theory, we focus on the stimulus that we are exposed to and the behaviour we have adopted, we do not try to make a meaning of the situation and analyze it. It is almost an automated response when placed in a given situation.

On the opposite, the second school of theories that try to explain how we learn is called the cognitive learning theories. In this case, our focus is much more on the internal process (analysis of the situation, evaluation of alternatives and adoption of the best possible behaviour based on this internal process). It means that we're going to assess and evaluate each stimulus that comes in and through internal processing and the long term memories that we have stored we are going to analyse what is good what is bad about this stimulus, what happens before, what decision we made in the past and then we're going to decide and act and adopt specific behaviours that in turn will be stored in memory for future use.

Classical Conditioning

Classical conditioning also called the Pavlov theory is an example of behavioural learning. Pavlov has often been described as the father of the modern advertising because he takes an object (in his classical experiment a bell) that has no meaning for a subject (a dog in the experiment) and associate it with something that has a strong meaning (food in the experiment) and, through repetition, he was able to transfer meaning from one of this object to the other. Basically, he taught a dog to salivate when hearing a bell and that's what advertisers try to do when they advertise a product and try to teach you that it is cheap, good, cool or anything else...and Pavlov succeeded with a dog before marketers used his techniques with consumers. For instance, sponsors of events try to associate themselves often with cool events (sports or concert) and communicate on it in hope that consumers will transfer their goodwill for the event to their product.

There are several concepts that are critical in classical conditioning. The first one is repetition of course you cannot learn through classical conditioning if you don't repeat the stimulus. Often marketers have problems with this aspect as they repeat over and over the same message but people may not process it as they are exposed to too many stimuli, therefore, marketers have to be very creative. Here are few examples.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UzzMir7zbN4

Discussion question: Please provide additional examples (print and video) and explain how they are successful at transferring meaning and repeating messages without being boring?

The two other concepts important in classical conditioning are stimulus generalization and stimulus discrimination.

Stimulus generalization insists on the fact that if we learn through classical conditioning we may not able to make clear distinction between two stimuli that very close or relatively similar. Basically, as our learning process is not based on information processing, one can consider close stimuli as being the same thing and that's why you have a lot of companies basically trying to copy others in hope that they will be perceived as similar. It happens a lot in packaging (similar colors as well known brands for example) or brand extensions to make sure that the new product is perceived as the same as the successful existing one.

On the other hand, using stimulus discrimination, companies very often try to make sure that you discriminate between them because they want you to see that they are different and that their brand is very distinct from their competitors. Some of the best examples in this area deal with the discrimination between Coke and Pepsi. Please watch the videos below where you see that Pepsi bears and coke bears are very different...because they target different segments and the commercial make sure that you understand the difference.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jPoM2o9kIBM

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DR_vdikpKZA

Instrumental or Operant Conditioning

Instrumental conditioning is also a behavioural learning theory. In this approach, consumers do a little more cognitive work than in classical conditioning but it remains very simplistic. In instrumental conditioning, consumers look at the outcomes of their behaviours. If my attempted behaviour in a given situation leads to a negative consequence (a negative reinforcement) so we will not try the behavior next time we are in the same situation but rather a new one. If we have a positive reinforcement after our behaviour (positive consequence), we learn that we should repeat the same behavior under the same condition. It is a trial and error approach.

In marketing, this approach is very much used in loyalty programs and promotion campaign to shape your behaviours and make sure that you remain a customer by giving you reward at each step of the process. See below.

Cognitive Learning

The second big theory is based on learning through cognition. In cognitive learning we are actually the smartest as we are going to process information before learning and assess if it's good or bad for us and of course if we should adopt behaviour and under what circumstances. It is also more demanding than behavioural learning but, as we integrate the new information in a mnemonic network and connect it with other meaningful pieces of information for us, it remains more accessible and anchored in our memory.