Chapter 9 – Learning and meaning

Learning is defined as any change in the content or organisation of long-term memory or behaviour. Consumers must learn almost everything related to being a consumer: — product existence, performance, availability, values, preference, and so on. Marketing managers are very interested in the nature of consumer learning. Consumers use two basic types of learning: conditioning and cognition.

There are two forms of conditioned learning: classical and operant.

Operant (or instrumental) conditioning differs from classical conditioning primarily in terms of the role and timing of reinforcement. Reinforcement plays a much larger role in operant conditioning than it does in classical conditioning. Since no automatic stimulus-response relationship is involved, the subject must first be induced to engage in the desired behaviour.

Then this behaviour must be reinforced. The sequence of events involved in operant conditioning is different from that associated with classical conditioning. For operant conditioning, trial precedes liking. The reverse is often true for classical conditioning. The cognitive approach to learning encompasses the mental activities of humans as they work to solve problems, cope with complex situations and function effectively in their environment. It includes iconic rote learning (forming associations between unconditioned stimuli without rewards), vicarious learning/modelling (learning by observing others) and reasoning.

The process of using an established relationship between a stimulus and a response to bring about the association of that same response to a different stimulus. This is most popular in low-involvement situations.

The process of learning where the consumer's response to a stimulus is either reinforced by a reward or discouraged by a punishment. Behaviours dealt with in operant conditioning are assumed to be under the conscious control of the consumer and the consumer is conditioned by consequences that occur after the behaviour.

The mental activities of humans as they work to solve problems or cope with situations. This involves learning the ideas, concepts, attitudes and facts that contribute to the ability to reason, solve problems and learn relationships without direct experience or reinforcement.

Learning the association between two or more concepts, in the absence of conditioning. Rote learning refers to memorising through repetition, this is used in the early stages of learning something new.

This involves low-involvement learning

A type of learning based on the observation and imitation of the behaviour of others. By observation, consumers learn throughout their lives that certain behaviours are appropriate in some situations while others are not.

Five of the most important are strength of learning, extinction (or forgetting), stimulus generalisation, stimulus discrimination and the response environment. Memory is the total accumulation of prior learning experiences. It consists of two interrelated components: short-term memory and long-term memory.

Brand image is what we think of and feel when we hear or see a brand name. Successful consumer marketers have recognised that establishing and maintaining a strong brand image is crucial to long-term success. Product positioning, which is a brand's position in a consumer's schematic memory in relation to competing brands, is an important focus of marketing activity. It is the final outcome of the consumer's information processing activities for a product category. Introducing new products with the same name as an existing product is referred to as brand leverage or brand extension.

Leveraging brand equity is an example of the use of stimulus generalisation by marketers.

Stimulus discrimination refers to the opposite process—that of learning to respond differently to somewhat similar stimuli. Marketers interested in building brand loyal customer segments must help consumers to discriminate between similar brands. Extinction, or forgetting, is also of interest to marketing managers. Extinction is directly related to the strength of original learning and can be modified by continued repetition. Corrective advertising is designed to increase the rate of extinction for incorrect material that consumers have learned.