CONSUMER

BEHAVIOR
MKTG 302/PSYC 335
SPRING 2024

SESSION 11

Nazlı Gürdamar Okutur

[email protected]
How is Information Stored in LTM?
Sleek shape
Fun to drive Attractive Design
Blue

Fast
Cryptocurrency
Self Driving
Elon Musk

Advanced Space
Tech Billionaire Flight

Electric
Car ASSOCIATIVE NETWORK
Lithium
Associations may emerge from personal
Mining Environmentally experience, advertising cues, other people’s
Friendly experiences etc.
How is Information Stored in LTM?

• Associative network model

• A set of associations in the memory that are linked to
a concept.
• When one concept is activated, others may become
activated via the links.
• Links created through knowledge and experience
• Some links stronger than others. Concepts connected
by strong links are more likely to activate each other
than are those connected by weak links.
Properties of Associative Networks
• Can’t retrieve when link fades (forgetting)

• Stronger links are more accessible

• Marketers work to strengthen wanted links
• Do not repeat un-wanted links
Properties of Associative Networks
• Can’t retrieve when link fades (forgetting)

• Stronger links are more accessible

• Marketers work to strengthen wanted links by repetition and consistency
• Do not repeat un-wanted links

• Spreading activation
• Explains our seemingly random thoughts
• Responsible for false recall
• Spreading of activation may also take place outside of conscious awareness
(Priming: Increased sensitivity to certain concepts and associations due to prior
experience based on implicit memory)
Can Brand Priming Activate Associated Goals?

Creativity

Does exposure to the apple logo activate a creativity goal?

Effects of Brand Exposure on Motivated Behavior:

Fitzsimons et al. (2008, experiment 3)

Procedure
1. Spatial-temporal ordering task − 3 photos to be ordered
based on succession of events; 5 sets of photos
Last set of cards had a computer picture with either
• Apple logo on monitor
• IBM logo on monitor
• No logo
Effects of Brand Exposure on Motivated Behavior:

Procedure
2. Unusual uses task – generate as many unusual uses for a brick as you can.
DV: numbers of uses generated
creativity of the first 3 uses

3. Filler task (20 min)

4. Chronic measure of creativity motivation (for half of participants

administered before the Unusual uses task)

How much do you care about being a creative person?

How important is it that other consider you a creative person?
Effects of Brand Exposure on Motivated Behavior:
Creativity behavior:
Number of object uses generated
Priming
• Processing of an initially encountered stimulus (“prime stimulus”) is
shown to influence a response to a subsequently encountered
stimulus (“target stimulus”).
• This is because spreading activation allows the primed content to
increase the accessibility of the associated content (semantic content,
goals, emotions, behaviors)
• The prime alters a judgment about, or response to, the target
stimulus temporarily
• The effects of primes are unintended and can occur without
awareness

Janiszewski & Wyer, 2014

Priming Goals Affect Consumer Choice

Chartrand et al. (2008, experiment 1)

Procedure
1. Participants engaged in a scrambled-sentence task.
Half of the them were exposed to concepts related to prestige
and half to concepts related to thrift

He prestige what want did → what did he want

Priming Goals Affect Consumer Choice

Procedure
2. Then they engaged in a filler task
3. Finally they were asked to choose between

Hanes at $6 for 2 pairs Nike at $5.25 for 1 pair

Priming Goals Affect Consumer Choice
Percentage of participants who chose the Nike (prestige) socks

60
50
40
30
20
10
0
Prestige Goal Thrift Goal
Associations can vary in 3 dimensions…

1. Favorability

2. Uniqueness
- “Fast service” is not unique to McDonald’s, but the Big Mac is.

3. Salience
- For example, a consumer might always think of the Golden Arches
when hearing the McDonald’s name. But the association that
McDonald’s offers breakfast sandwich may be less salient than
other associations.
Spreading Activation:
Why some concepts are more accessible than others?

Knowledge accessibility depends on:

a) Frequency of concept activation
b) Recency of concept activation
c) Number of associations
Marketing Relevance of Association Networks

Brand associations as driver of brand equity

Measuring brand associations helps identify gaps between

actual and desired associations, and in turn:

• Develop more effective brand positioning

• Design more effective marketing communications

Memory and Retrieval
• Marketers not only want consumers to store information in
memory, properly categorized, and with favorable, unique,
salient associations—they want consumers to retrieve this
information from memory when making decisions.
Retrieving Info from Explicit Memory
• Unaided recall
• While watching X last night, what commercials did you see?
• Cued or Aided recall
• While watching X last night, did you see a commercial for (product
category)?
• While watching X last night, did you see a commercial for (brand
name)?
• Recognition
• Which of these ads (that I am showing you now) did you see while
watching X last night?
Context-Dependent Memory
• Is memory enhanced when learning environment = recall
environment?
• Godden and Baddeley (1975)

1) Participants: 18 divers
2) Learn a list of 36 words either on land or underwater
3) Recall the same words either on land or underwater
• 2 (learning environment: wet vs. dry) by 2 (recall
environment wet vs. dry)
During learning During recall

Learning environment
= Recall environment

Learning environment
≠ Recall environment

Learning environment
= Recall environment

Learning environment
≠ Recall environment
Context-Dependent Memory
During learning During recall Average percent of
words recalled

Learning environment =
32%
Recall environment

Learning environment ≠
Recall environment 23%

Learning environment =
Recall environment 37%

Learning environment ≠
Recall environment 24%
Context-Dependent Memory
• The environment can act as a contextual cue.
• When the environment at recall is the same as at encoding,
forgetting decreases.
Retrieval Failures (forgetting)
Results from:
• DECAY: Pathway to the information fades over time when
associations are not repeated

• INTERFERENCE: New information about the same topic

may reduce the ability to retrieve the original information

ØDecay and interference can be used to explain primacy and

recency effects: Tendency to show greater memory for
information that comes first or last in a sequence
Strategic Memory Protection Theory
• To what extent do people manage their memory assets?
• People have a tendency to engage in behaviors that they think
will allow them to protect their ability to remember special
experiences that they want to look back on later.
• e.g., graduation ceremonies

• H1: People avoid repeating an experience that they consider

very special more than an experience that was nonspecial.

• H2: The preference to avoid repeating a special experience

compared to a nonspecial experience is driven by a desire to
protect special memories.

Zauberman et al. (2009)

Strategic Memory Protection Theory
1) Describe “particularly special” night out or “pleasant but not particularly special” night out (e.g.,
when and where it occurred, whom they were with, and how they felt during the experience)

2) How special was this experience? (1 = not at all special, 7 = extremely special)

3) “Imagine you have an opportunity to go back to the same place with a different person (or
people)….”
Rate how much would you want to go back again? (1 = definitely not go back, 4 = no preference, 7 =
definitely go back).

Willingness to go back to the same place with

different people
6
5
4
Most people indicated that they would want to 3
return if the experience would be similar, or go 2
back with the same person 1
Special Pleasant but not special
Retrieval Failures (forgetting)
Results from:
• DECAY: Pathway to the information fades over time when
associations are not repeated

• INTERFERENCE: New information about the same topic

may reduce the ability to retrieve the original information

ØDecay and interference can be used to explain primacy and

recency effects: Tendency to show greater memory for
information that comes first or last in a sequence
Retrieval Errors: Reconstructive Memory

Memory is subject to:

- Selection (e.g., remembering only the good things from the

vacation)
- Confusion (e.g., erroneous eye-witness testimonies;
remembering a fact and forgetting the source, aka source
confusion)
- Distortion (e.g., false memories—the tendency to remember
items or events that never happened)
Reconstructive Memory:
Can advertising influence memory of product experience?

Braun (1999)

Design of the experiment:

3 (level of experience: good, medium, bad)
X 2 (advertising: yes, no)
Between-subjects design
Reconstructive Memory:
Can advertising influence memory of product experience?

Procedure:
1. Participants drink one of three juices:

“Good” Orange Juice: “Medium” Orange Juice: “Bad” Orange Juice:

orange juice slightly with a bit of salt and with a lot of salt and
diluted with water vinegar vinegar

2. Engage in distraction task

3. Afterwards, half see ads for “sweet, pulpy and pure” juice; half don’t
4. DV: Identification Test
Reconstructive Memory:
Can advertising influence memory of product experience?

Identification Test: Pick the juice you tasted from a line up of

5 blends

1 2 3 4 5
“Very Good” “Good” “Medium” “Bad” “Very Bad”
Orange Juice Orange Juice Orange Juice Orange Juice Orange Juice
Reconstructive Memory:
Can advertising influence memory of product experience?

Identification Test: Pick the juice you tasted from a line up of

5 blends

People who tasted the Good orange juice

Ad No Ad
Very bad 0 0
Bad 2 6
Medium 6 6
Good 31% 8 13 50%
Very good 38% 10 1
Reconstructive Memory:
Can advertising influence memory of product experience?

Identification Test : Pick the juice you tasted from a line up of

5 blends

People who tasted the Medium orange juice

Ad No Ad
Very bad 0 0
Bad 6 7
Medium 30% 8 10 48%
Good 9 3
Very good 4 1
48%
Reconstructive Memory:
Can advertising influence memory of product experience?

Identification Test : Pick the juice you tasted from a line up of

5 blends

People who tasted the Bad orange juice

Ad No Ad
Very bad 3 5
Bad 19% 5 11 48%
Medium 6 6
Good 6 2
Very good 7 0
70%
Reconstructive Memory:
Can advertising influence memory of product experience?

People who had tasted the bad juice say they ‘remember’
tasting the good juice, and describe it in terms like:

“I thought it tasted real sweet. It quenched my thirst.

Refreshing. … It made me want more.”
 Read Textbook Chapter 4
•(Memory)
Next Class: How do we study consumer
behavior?

Looking • Readings:
• “How humans became 'consumers':

Forward A history”
• “Plastics or people?”