Consumer memory 1

CONSUMER PSYCHOLOGY -COUN 405

1. What is consumer psychology?

Consumer psychology is an interdisciplinary area that helps us
to understand why and how individuals and groups engage in
particular consumer activities and how they are affected by
those choices. It mainly focuses on the cognitive processes and
behaviours involved when people buy and use goods and
services. The cognitive processes help us to understand how
people process information and how they subsequently act.

The discipline combines research methods and theories from

psychology, marketing, advertising, economics, sociology and
anthropology. Some of the areas of interest in consumer
psychology include;
 Decision making
 consumer judgment
 perception and attention
 information processing
 motivational determinants of consumer behaviour
 attitude formation and change
 Influences of advertising upon consumer behaviour

2. Why study consumer psychology?

In our contemporary society we are all consumers as we
engage in consumer activities such as travelling, grooming/use
of beauty products, listening to music, reading a book, eating in
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a restaurant etc. This shows that almost all behaviours we

engage in as humans in our daily lives are directly or indirectly
related to consumption. Hence consumption is an integral part
of our lives. Examine some of the following and discuss how
they relate to consumption:
 Christmas celebrations,
 Birthday celebrations
 Home coming celebrations
This shows that we are living in a consumer driven economy
and therefore consumption needs to be carefully studied as it is
a key aspect of human behaviour.

3.Brief history of consumer psychology developmental

milestones
The culture of consumption started before the industrial
revolution .Between seventeenth and eighteenth century there
was a great increase in consumption throughout Europe and
this trend escalated during the industrial revolution when rates
of consumption went up globally.

1800s
This corresponded to spread of industrial revolution in Europe
and America. There were fundamental changes in
transportation, metal manufacture, textile, agriculture and the
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social structure. This necessitated increase in food supplies,

raw materials and advancement in technology and as a result
production levels went up. At the same time, scientists started
getting interested in understanding role of consumer society in
influencing consumer behaviour.

1840–1920

During the 1840s Volney Palmer opened the first advertising

agency in the world which offered services as brokers for
advertising space in newspapers. Gradually, the number of
advertising agencies increased which offered a wide range of
advertising related services.

Though production levels had increased the range of goods

available was limited. In 1852, the world’s first department store,
Le Bon Marché, opened in Paris and soon others like Macy’s
opened in New York in 1878.

In 1879, the first experimental psychology laboratory was set up

in Leipzig by a German psychologist named Wilhelm Wundt.. He
was one of the founders of the first major school of thought in
psychology known as structuralism which focused on
understanding the structure of the mind, especially the immediate
conscious experience. Wundt viewed attention as part of
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perception that humans are consciously aware of, hence the most
relevant area to Consumer Psychology.

Harlow Gale, a student of Wundt got interested in the effects of

advertising on attention and memory and conducted a series of
surveys and experiments on the subject. In the early 1900s while
a lecturer at Minnesota he ran one of the first experimental
psychology laboratories in the USA. During this period,
experimental psychologists realized that consumers were
influenced more by emotions than rationality because advertising
captures attention and appeals to emotions.

In 1909 a truck of Coca-Cola Company containing Coca-Cola

syrup was seized by the US government .Later the company was
charged with selling a drink containing caffeine which was
regarded as a harmful ingredient. In 1911, the company engaged
a psychologist by the name Harry Hollingworth to study the
effect of caffeine on human behaviour. Hollingworth’s findings
showed that caffeine had no detrimental impact on cognitive or
behavioural performance even when consumed in larger doses
than in a bottle of coke. As a result, Coca-Cola win the case but
lost at the Supreme court. Later Hollingworth continued to
research how advertisements affect purchase behaviour.

In 1913, Henry Ford invented the assembly line in 1913 which

made manufacturing easier and cheaper and cars became affordable
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by many people. This led to rapid growth in manufacturing

practices, hence increased competition between products and
brands which increased the need for advertising.

During the 1920s and 1930s, consumer related advertising and

research flourished. Prior to the world war, the sales of various
goods escalated but the trend changed when the world war began.

1939–1970
During the World War II, there was an inevitable food
shortage .The Department of Agriculture in the US called upon
Kurt Lewin, a social psychologist, to help convince Americans to
eat high protein foods such as hearts, kidneys and livers that had
previously been thrown away.

After the world war II, consumption around the world

gradually started picking up again and consequently a renewed
interest in advertising emerged. At the same period, Ernest
Dichter introduced Freudian concepts into the US advertising
industry. Dichter wanted to understand how consumers’
unconscious desires influenced consumer spending.

After the world war governments around the world were looking
at ways to strengthen their economies mainly through
consumer spending. By 1950s politicians were busy promoting
the benefits of living in a consumer society which led to an
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increase in advertising .Up to 1960s, a lot of consumer related

research mushroomed .This corresponded to the period the UK
opened its first commercial TV station (1955).This dominated the
media industry until 1982 when another TV channel (channel 4)
was launched.

In 1960, Division 23 of the American Psychological

Association was established. It was then called the Consumer
Psychology Division and in 1988 the name changed to “The
Society for Consumer Psychology”. During the 1960s a string
of well-known consumer behaviour books also were published.
The Annual Review of Psychology published the first article
reviewing Consumer Psychology as a subject area.

PSYCHOLOGY AND CONSUMER BEHAVIOUR

1. Memory

Knowledge of how memory works helps marketers to

understand why consumers forget certain marketing messages,
and what can be done to help them remember product
information. Understanding different methods of learning can
ensure that consumers are ‘taught’ to engage in specific types
of consumption behaviour. Memory is an active mental system
that receives, stores, organizes, alters and recovers information
Understanding how our memory works, helps to fully
appreciate how consumers reason, make decisions and solve
problems. Memories help us to learn new information, affect
how we perceive stimuli and also guide our behaviour.
 Consumer memory 7

Purchase decisions are often made long after the consumer was
originally exposed to the product information. For consumers
to remember any product- or service-related information later,
they need to encode and store that information. The process of
remembering requires encoding, storage and retrieval.

When encoding information, the consumer transforms the

stimuli they encounter into a representation that can be stored
in memory. It is important that the consumer fully recognizes
and understands the stimuli he/she has encountered. After
encoding the information, the consumer then stores the
information in their memory so that it can be retrieved later need
arises. Retrieval of product information starts with the
activation of a node. A node is a particular piece of information
that has been stored in the long-term memory. When the node
is activated, it is transferred from long-term memory to short-
term memory so that a person becomes conscious of the
product-related information.

Memory systems

Memory consists of three components. These are;

1. Sensory memory

2. Short-term memory

3. Long-term memory
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Sensory stores

The sensory memory allows storage of information received

through vision, touch, smell, taste, and hearing for very brief
periods of time. The information lingers for some time after
the end of stimulation. It has been found that visual
information decays within approximately half a second
while auditory information lasts for around 2 seconds. The
information is then transferred to short-term memory.

Short-term memory (STM)

Short-term memory is a system for storing information for brief

periods of time and it has a limited capacity. It deals with the
information that is currently being processed. STM has the
capacity to deal with ‘seven plus or minus two’ pieces of
information at any given time. However, it is possible to
increase the amount of information that the STM is capable of
dealing with by grouping information together into meaningful
units of information (chunks).

When people are presented with more information than the STM
can deal with, they tend to more readily recall information that
was either presented at the beginning or at the end. This is
known as the order effect. Study findings have shown that
people generally recall the first (primacy effect) and the last
(recency effect) few words very well. The primacy effect
occurs because the first few words enter the long term memory
through rehearsal. The recency effect occurs because the last few
words get retained in the short-term memory at the time of
recall but the words in the middle of the list get lost from
memory because they get replaced by the later words. This
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means advertisers and marketers ought to present the information

they hope that consumers will remember first or last in their
marketing messages.

Long-term memory (LTM)

Long-term memory (LTM) does not have a limited capacity; it

is essentially infinite. When our memories have reached the long-
term store, they are there for a very long period of time.
Information is usually transferred from STM to LTM. The more
integrated the information is in LTM, the easier it will be to
remember. The structure of LTM is like a massive integrated
spider’s web. Each consumer-related piece of information that
is stored is also directly or indirectly linked to other pieces of
information also stored in LTM which form an associative
network. For example, what comes to your mind when you her
of the brand name Kimbo, Cowboy etc etc???

The proximity of the relationship between certain associations

and brand names or products can be tested by response-time
methods. This involves presenting statements whereby
participants are requested to press either a true or a false button
as quickly as they can, depending whether they believe the
statements are correct or not. Longer response times indicate that
the associations are further away from what is being tested and
shorter times indicate there is a close association between the
two. This method is useful in mapping out consumers’
cognitive representations of particular brands and products.

The way information is organized has an impact upon how

easily it can be stored in and retrieved from LTM. For example,
when multiple items of information are comprehensible and
 Consumer memory 10

clearly linked together, they are more easily remembered than if

they were not. Hence, pieces of information that are clearly
grouped together enhance memory performance.

LTM may consist of several long-term memory systems. For

example, there may be an episodic memory and a semantic
memory. Episodic memory refers to memories of specific
events that happened at a particular place and at a particular time
while semantic memory refers to memories of general factual
knowledge about the world. Commercials such as advertisements
often attempt to trigger episodic memories by focusing on
experiences that are shared by a large number of people. In this
way consumers’ may become receptive of what was presented in
the advert.

Remembering and forgetting

According to consumer psychologists, there are two reasons

associated with why people remember and forget. These are;

1. Encoding specificity
2. Interference

Encoding specificity

This functions as a memory aid. Studies have found that our

ability to recall information is influenced by the level of similarity
between encoding and retrieval conditions. This means our
ability to recall previously experienced information will be
sensitive to any environmental changes which occur between
learning and recalling that information. Tulving and Thomson
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(1973) found that people remember events much better if they

are in the same environment as the one where the information was
first learned. Godden and Baddeley (1975) further showed that
long-term memory is context dependent in a study where they
asked scuba divers to learn a list of words, either while they were
20 feet under water or were above water. Their findings showed
that memory performance was best when encoding and retrieval
took place in the same environment. The encoding specificity
principle supports the importance of effective in-store
advertising. If the context of an advert can be created at the point
of sale, it can aid recognition and recall of product information

Interference

There are two types of interference. These are:

1. Proactive
2. Retroactive

Proactive interference is when new learning is disrupted by old

information

Retroactive interference is when the forgetting of previously

learnt information is caused by the learning of new information.

The greater the similarity between memory traces, the greater the
degree of interference. For example, if an individual is exposed to
two adverts of a similar nature in a row, when they are later trying
to remember the second commercial, they may actually
remember the first one (proactive interference). The more similar
advertisements are (e.g. same product category or products made
by the same manufacturer), the more likely consumers are to
experience interference. However, the interference effect ceases
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when consumers are exposed to brand names that they are

already highly familiar with.

NB

Consumers can intentionally try to forget information. For example,

old information can be temporarily blocked out, when new and
appealing product information is made available.

Methods of enhancing consumer memory

Some of the ways marketers can use to ensure that their products
and services are more likely to be remembered by consumers
are;
1. Repetition of marketing messages

2. Pictorial cues

Repetition

Repeatedly exposing consumers to products and services

(marketing stimuli) has two main advantages;

1. increasing the likelihood of recalling them

2. Strengthening associations between their specific

attributes and brand names

Repeated exposure works best when consumers have little or no

involvement with the stimuli they are exposed to, for example
when advertising a new product or service in the market.
Repetition helps to increase the likelihood of moving information
from STM to LTM. It has also been realized that using different
 Consumer memory 13

adverts (stimuli) to advertise the same brand can be even more

effective in increasing the likelihood of recalling.

Consumers are also much more likely to believe the messages

they are repeatedly exposed to when they are not motivated to
scrutinize the message content

However, it has been found that repetition is not as effective in

improving memory performance especially when competitive
interference occurs due to similar nature of other messages
consumers may be exposed to before or after the intended target
stimulus. One way of dealing with this kind of interference is to
use cues that are unique so that consumers cannot confuse them
with other marketing stimuli.

Pictorial cues

Pictorial stimuli are more likely to capture consumers’

attention. This explains why most consumers tend to look at
visual stimuli before the text that often accompanies the picture.
Pictures are essential in presenting short messages and stories
clearly as they they can improve memory and aid recall .Hence,
information is presented using visual stimuli, is more likely to
be recognized later. This suggests that when consumers have been
exposed to advertising that incorporates pictures, the product
advertised will be more easily remembered at the point of
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purchase. Use of pictures that have deeper meaning and are

simpler in nature can be remembered easily.

NB Cognitive processes change when people get older. One

effect of aging is that the speed of processing generally slows
down. In particular, it appears that people’s short-term memory is
affected and consequently older individuals cannot always easily
store information about lots of different products and brands.
This may explain why they are less likely to spend time
searching for and looking at additional product information.

To ensure that older consumers will correctly remember the

information they are exposed to, marketing stimuli need to be
presented in a way that is meaningful and consequently easily
fits into their schema. Putting information into context aids recall
as it facilitates integration.
 Learning 15

LEARNING
Learning can be defined as a relatively permanent change in
behaviour which is linked to experience. The experiences that
affect learning can be direct ones eg using a product or indirect
ones such as observing somebody else using a product.
Learning in general can be viewed as consisting of five
elements. These are,

1 Internal drive

Encourages an individual to take action to learn. The likelihood

that learning will occur may be influenced by an emotional
response such as fear or happiness.

2 Cue stimuli

This is when a consumer encounters an external stimulus that

encourages learning. Such stimulus could be an
advertisement, a point-of purchase display or perhaps a
leaflet. Cues are not generally as influential as internal
drives in the learning process.

3 Response

This is the way in which consumers respond to both the

internal drive and cue stimuli. If the internal drive comes
together with the cue, then the likelihood of purchase
increases. However, future purchases will be determined on
the experiences they have after having tested the product and
not on the combined drive and cue response.

4 Reinforcement
 Learning 16

The consumer experiences a positive outcome of some kind as

the result of having consumed/purchased a particular product
or service. For example, it may be due to affirmative
feedback from others or from the product’s functionality. If
the product purchase is not positively reinforced, the
consumer will continue to try different purchases until their
needs are satisfied.

5 Retention

This is whether or not the learned material reaches long-term

memory and can subsequently be remembered.

Learning is mainly based upon an association between two

mental representations eg we may learn to associate the brand
Mercedes-Benz with luxury.

There are three main schools of thought on how consumers

learn. These are

1. behavioural theories,

2. Social learning theories

3. cognitive theories

Behavioural learning
Behavioural learning techniques have been widely applied to
consumption behaviours. Two of the most common methods of
behaviour learning are classical and operant conditioning.

a. Classical conditioning
 Learning 17

Classical conditioning occurs when a stimulus that elicits a

response is learned to be associated with another stimulus that
does not originally elicit a response. Ivan Pavlov experimented
by ringing a bell every time a hungry dog was fed. On each
occasion when the dog realized he was going to be fed, he
salivated. After ringing the bell repeatedly every time food was
presented to the dog, it was found that the dog salivated upon
hearing the bell, even though no food was offered. Hence, the
dog had been conditioned into salivating upon hearing the
bell.

Prior to the conditioning taking place, the dog had salivated every
time it got fed and Pavlov called the food an unconditioned
stimulus (US) and the dog’s response to the food an
unconditioned response (UR). He also called the bell a
conditioned stimulus (CS) and when the dog salivated upon
hearing the bell, he called it a conditioned response (CR). This
process is known as first-order conditioning. It is important that
the CS is almost immediately preceded by the US. If the timing
between the stimuli is changed, the conditioning effect will not
be as strong.

The US should preferably be a biologically significant stimulus

such as food, sex, or an electric shock so as to elicit natural
responses.

For example, a nice looking girl in sexy lingerie can make a

heterosexual male get sexually aroused (biological response). The
sexual arousal would occur without any prior learning which
makes it a US.
 Learning 18

It is important to repeatedly pair the CS with the US, otherwise

the conditioning effect may gradually disappear through
extinction. If the CS were to continue to be presented without
the US, gradually the likelihood of the CR occurring will
decrease. For example, Pavlov continued ringing the bell
without pairing with the food and he noticed that the dog
stopped salivating.

The form of classical conditioning where the CS is directly

linked to US is known as first order conditioning.

Higher order conditioning

This is a type of conditioning whereby the CS is not directly

linked with the US. Instead it is paired with an already
established CS. For example, a new song by ………….that is
continuously played in clubs and on the radio will be paired
with positive US, such as having fun dancing and nice drinks.
After having been repeatedly exposed to the music while
enjoying yourself, you will form positive attitudes towards
Justin Timberlake’s song. His tune is then paired with a new CS
such as shampoo in an advertisement. By repeatedly showing
the advertisement, positive attitudes will subsequently be
formed towards the shampoo.

Music can be a powerful tool in marketing. in the fields of

marketing and advertising that the use of music through
classical conditioning can create a positive evaluation of a
product

b. Operant conditioning

Operant conditioning can also be applied to influence consumer

behaviour, a concept that was introduced by B.F Skinner in 1
953. The word operant refers to a behaviour that has some effect
on the environment For example, if a child answering a question
 Learning 19

correctly in class and gets praised by the teacher, he is likely to

engage in answering questions in future. If the child answers the
question correctly and gets no recognition, the probability of
answering questions in future may decrease. Naturally, positive
outcomes are favoured over negative ones and consequently
individuals learn to engage in behaviours that produce positive
responses and to avoid those that may result in negative
outcomes. Operant conditioning takes place when behaviour
through reinforcement or punishment.

i. Reinforcement

There are two types of reinforcement, positive and negative, and

both increase the likelihood of the operant behaviour. Positive
reinforcement is the use of a reward to demonstrate that a person
has engaged in a behaviour that is approved of while negative
reinforcement is when something unpleasant is removed or termin-
ated, following a desired behaviour.

There are also two kinds of punishments, a positive and

negative kind, and both decrease the likelihood of the operant
behaviour happening again. Positive punishment is when an
unpleasant stimulus is introduced, and negative punishment is
when a pleasant stimulus is removed. See Table 2.1 for examples
of all four types of conditioning. Generally reinforcement
techniques work better than punishment (since people generally
prefer it when positive things happen to them), and learning can
happen quicker when a reward is given every time a consumer
engages in a desired behaviour, which is known as continuous
reinforcement. However, intermittent or partial
reinforcement, which is when a reward is given infrequently,
has been found to make the learning last longer once the
reinforcement has been stopped.

How does a stimulus become an effective reinforcer?

 Learning 20

A good reinforcer is something that individuals like. A

person’s operant behaviour can be reinforced by offering some-
thing as a reward that is perceived as more desirable than the
behaviour we wish to reinforce.

Other factors hat increase effectiveness of a reinforcer are

1.Choice of the reinforcer-

Some consumers will respond to a reinforcer depending on the

purpose it serves to them. Some positive reinforcers appear to
work well in the consumer world. For example, getting points
on a reward card every time one buys something in a particular
shop/supermarket.

2.Magnitude of the reinforcer

Generally the effectiveness of reinforcer is greater if the

amount or magnitude of the stimulus is great. A larger
positive or negative reinforcer strengthens the behavior and
produces it to a greater extent than a smaller amount of the
same reinforcer. For example a person would work longer and
harder for a larger amount of money than for a small amount.
In negative reinforcement, termination of a more intense
aversive stimulus strengthens the behavior that terminates it
more than termination of a lower magnitude of the same
stimulus would. Eg a person would put more effort to escape
from a burning house than from a scorching sun.

3 Reinforcer immediacy

The time between occurrence of a behavior and the

reinforcing consequence (reinforcer) is very important. For a
 Learning 21

consequence to act as a reinforcer, it should occur

immediately after the response. The longer the time between
behavior occurrence and the reinforcer, the less effective the
consequence will be because the connection between the two
is weakened. For example if you are training a dog to sit on
command, if you give the treat immediately the dog sits
down, the sitting down behavior is likely to be reinforced.

4.Motivating operations-

Most reinforcers are effective if a consumer has been deprived

eg food is a reinforcer to most people w3hen they are hungry

5.Clarity of instructions on use

Instructions are specific guidelines that indicate the specific

behaviors will pay off in particular situations. For example if
your marketer suggests a rule that “you will receive a specific
incentive if you learn the answers to all the questions in a an
interview”. Instructions facilitate behavior change as they
may speed up the learning process for individuals may
influence an individual to work for delayed reinforcement.
Further, instructions may teach individuals to follow
guidelines for example in cases of young children or those
with developmental challenges.

ii. Punishment
 Learning 22

Punishment is part of operant conditioning. It increases the

likelihood of occurrence of behaviour. There are two types of
punishments. A punishment has three steps. These are;

1. A particular behaviour occurs

2. A consequence immediately follows the behaviour.

3. Behaviour is less likely to occur in future. Hence the

behaviour gets weakened.

There are two types of punishments namely:

1. Positive punishment

2. Negative punishment

In positive punishment,

1. There is occurrence of a behaviour

2. Followed by an aversive stimulus

3. As a result the behaviour is less likely to occur in the

future.

In negative punishment,

1.There is occurrence of a behaviour

2.Followed by the removal of a reinforcing stimulus

3.As a result, the behaviour is less likely to occur in the future

Examples
 Learning 23

1.Positive punishment -When consumers purchase and

drive a heavy duty vehicle, they have to pay a higher road
tax.

Consequence: Decrease the likelihood of people buying and

driving heavy duty vehicles

2. Negative punishment- A parking lot decides to charge

for its parking. Hence removing the privilege of a free
parking.

Consequence: Decreases the likelihood of people using the

parking lot again.
Conclusion: For a given operant behaviour, punishment
decreases the probability that the behaviour will be repeated.

2. Social learning

Social learning is also known as observational learning or

vicarious learning. It occurs as a result of observing the
behaviour of others as well as the consequences of that
behaviour. Albert Bandura (1965, 1969) conducted a series of
experiments demonstrating how children learn through vicarious
learning. Observational learning takes place through a series
of steps;

1. Observation

This occurs mainly through visual and auditory cues. Eg if a

consumer sees a person that they admire, such as….celebrity..,
endorsing a particular product, like sunglasses, then they are
much more likely to buy the product.

2.Immitation;
 Learning 24

Occurs after a person has perceived the behaviour as good.

For example, adults are often keen to imitate the behaviour of
those they admire and respect.

3.Reinforcement; Occurs when the imitated behaviour gets

rewarded eg through a praise by peers

4.Behaviour retention: Repetition of the behaviour through

intermittent reinforcement leads to internalizing and
maintenance of the behaviour.

Social learning is also often used in advertising. For

example, it can also be effective for product placement in
popular TV shows and films.

3.Cognitive learning

This type of learning focuses upon internal mental processes. It

concentrates on how people think about particular products and
services, in the hope that they can predict their preferences
and choice. It is generally assumed that people are rational in the
way they think and that preferences are created after consumers
develop conscious hypotheses that they act on.

Cognitive models for how people learn and remember

meaningful information generally consist of a number of steps.
The cognitive learning process consists of five main aspects:

(1)attention (2) comprehension (3) learning (4) recall and

reconstruction (5) feedback

Attention: The first aspect of cognitive learning is that a

marketer needs to ensure that they capture consumers’ attention.
If they fail to do so, their marketing messages may not be
meaningful and can easily get replaced by something else .
 Learning 25

Comprehension: New information enters into STM. The

information gets rapidly analyzed and the consumer determines
whether or not it interests them. This might be achieved by
searching for keywords or symbols to identify what the
information is about. For example, an advert for ice cream
featuring a football player may be disregarded because the
individual has no interest in football and they think the ad is
sport related. Generally, the cues that capture a person’s
attention will be used to evaluate whether or not to think
further about the product/service they have been exposed to.

The new information entered into STM is simultaneously

influenced by previous information already stored in LTM. If
the new information in some way links with prior knowledge,
the individual is likely to think further about the stimulus they
have encountered.

If the marketing information is targeting people who not aware

of the specific goods/services, then the information should be
clear and easy to understand eg avoid use of jargons. If the
target audience is mainly those with previous experiences of a
particular product or service, then emphasis on clarity is
unnecessary

Learning

will take place once the information has been elaborated upon
and integrated with the individual’s existing store of
knowledge. The new details can fit into the existing network of
knowledge or they can actually alter it. If consumers do not
think further about the message, the information is unlikely to
be stored in LTM.
Low and high involvement learning

How interested a consumer is will have an impact upon how

much they will wish to think about the product information
presented to them and to what extent they are keen to learn about
new products and services.

In order to ensure that it is not only consumers with high levels

of involvement who learn, marketers frequently repeat their
messages.

Hence consumers’ interest can be enhanced through repetition

(rote learning) eg exposing them to the same jingles,
advertisements and brand names. Rote learning can happen
through exposure to both visual and auditory stimuli. Learning
through repetition may not be long-lasting. Generally it is easier
for marketers to encourage consumers to learn when they are
motivated to do so.

Consumers’ capacity to learn cognitively is also affected by how

familiar they are with the products or brands. The less knowledge
they have of a product category, the less likely they are to
remember the information associated with the product .For
example, a person with a keen interest in photography is likely to
seek out information in a different way, and learn about different
types of digital cameras more rapidly than someone who has no
or little experience of photography. Additionally, how easily
accessible information is also plays a part in learning process. If
the information they require is difficult to come by or unclear,
consumer learning is less likely to take place.

Recall and reconstruction

 Learning 27

Due to the fact that consumers are exposed to so many consumer-

related stimuli, it is often difficult for them to remember the exact
information presented to them. Instead they will recall the gist of
the message rather than the exact wording. However, if the message
is ambiguous, they may reconstruct what they have seen or heard
so that it fits into already existing cognitive scripts. This means
that sometimes when consumers recall a message, it can be very
different from the actual message itself.

Feedback

Consumers will receive feedback at various stages of the learning

process. Feedback may be direct or indirect and can come from
culture, family, friends, peers, product experience, advertising, and
the mass media. Feedback may determine whether they will
elaborate upon the message, integrate it into already existing
memory, whether they will receive the information in a positive
manner.. The feedback received will be integrated with already
existing memories which will in turn affect what kind of
information that consumer will focus on and learn in the future.

Summary

There are different theoretical frameworks for learning

consumer behaviour. These are; behavioural (classical and
operant conditioning),social learning and cognitive approaches.
Behavioural learning emphasizes observable behavioural
outcomes, cognitive learning focuses solidly on mental
processing and social learning theory puts the spotlight on how
people observe others in social settings.
 How the science of Consumer Psychology grew in parallel with the consumer society 28

Perception and attention

28