Transcript How consumers acquire, remember, and use product knowledge

How consumers acquire,
remember, and use product
knowledge
Ing. Jana Turčínková
Mendel University in Brno
Overview
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Consumer attention and comprehension
Consumer memory
Consumer judgment
Consumer choice
Consumer attention and
comprehension
• Product knowledge acquired through secondhand
experience, i.e. hearsay – provided by mass media,
sales representatives, telemarketers, product labels,
coupons, brochures, P-O-P displays, websites, etc.
• Product knowledge acquired through firsthand
experience, i.e. product trial – often more
informative than indirect, secondhand experience
Limits of attention
• Due to limited capacity, we must process information
selectively.
• Four stages in the human information receiving process:
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stimulation,
registration,
organization,
interpretation.
• Our senses are utilized to perceive the world around us and to
help us learn about it.
• Since stimulation comes at us from several directions at once,
we have the biological capability to physically ‘tune out’ most
of what we do not need for the task at hand.
The Magical No. 7, Plus or Minus Two
• According to psychologist George Miller (1956),
people can attend to seven (plus or minus two) units,
or pieces, of information at one time. (We extend
our capacity for information processing by creating
categories into which stimuli are organized.)
• Thus, it is easy to overwhelm or overload customers
with too much information.
• Because consumers cannot attend to and think
about large amount of information at one time,
presenting information in a way that reduces the
time and effort involved in making comparisons
helps consumers to make better decisions.
Attention intensity
= The amount of information people can attend to, can
vary from five to nine
• Factors influencing the amount: prior knowledge or
expertise
• Arousal – a state of wakefulness or alertness
– the best level for perception (when cognitive capacity is
the greatest) → moderate arousal
Selective attention
• Voluntary and Involuntary Attention
– People voluntarily attend to information that is relevant to
their current plans, intentions, and goals.
– Salient stimuli draw attention involuntarily, it is difficult to
ignore them.
Salience
• Salience is context dependent – stimuli that are
salient in one context or situation may not be very
salient in a different environment.
• Stimuli are salient only when they are different from
other stimuli, e.g. novelties.
Vividness
• Vivid stimuli also draws attention automatically and
involuntarily.
• However, they are attention drawing across contexts.
• Vivid stimuli are
– emotionally interesting,
– concrete and imaginary provoking, and
– proximate in a sensory, temporal, or spatial way.
Further factors
• Personal interest
• Concreteness – concrete information is easy to
picture, imagine, and think about, and consequently,
is often very influential.
• Proximity – information that is close to a consumer is
more vivid and has more impact then information
that is distant or not immediately relevant
– Sensory proximity, i.e. firsthand vs. secondhand
information.
– Temporal proximity, i.e. how recently an event occurred.
– Spatial proximity, i.e. location of events.
Comprehension
= relating information presented to information based
on prior experience and stored in a memory
• Believability (believing is easier then unbelieving –
rejection a false claim requires an additional step and
extra effort)
– Distraction
– Repetition
Selective perception
• From a purely biological standpoint, our senses are utilized to
perceive the world around us and to help us learn about it.
• We take in stimuli from this world by tasting, touching,
smelling, hearing and seeing what’s going on around us.
• Selective perception from a psychological standpoint is how
we view our world to create or justify our own reality – what
we wish to see in this world we will see in this world.
• Information we receive will be processed in a manner that
harmonizes with and supports our current beliefs. In other
words, as Nietzsche put, there really are no facts, only
interpretations.
Selective perception
Selective perception
• There are some differences in perception
– cultural
– personal
– gender-specific
• Also prejudice can affect perception
Consumer memory
• People can store a large number of inactive memory traces in
long-term memory.
• However, to work with information, or to think, relevant
information must be retrieved from inactive long-term
memory (LTM) and brought into active short-term memory
(STM).
• We are consciously aware of information held in STM.
• Although STM has a limited capacity, many different types of
cognitive operations, or thought processes (such as thinking,
reasoning, problem solving, decision-making, etc.), can be
performed on information held in STM.
Consumer memory
• The transfer of information from STM to LTM
is controlled by:
– rehearsal – involves repeating information over
and over in one’s head,
– coding – involves relating information stored in
STM to information stored in LTM.
Short-term memory
• It holds information only for a very brief
period of time.
• It can hold on average 7 plus or minus 2 items.
• Primacy effect vs. Recency effect
Long-term memory
• Has a very large storage capacity.
• Once information is encoded or transferred into long
term memory, it remains there permanently.
• Organization – the process of grouping or chunking
individual pieces of information into larger units on
the basis of a specific relationship between the
pieces – thus, if you want your consumers to
remember information presented in an
advertisement, information must be presented in an
organized manner.
Long-term memory
The encoding-specificity principle of LTM
• LTM is context dependent – contextual cue or
background cues have a surprisingly powerful
influence on memory performance.
• When people encode or learn information they wish
to remember, irrelevant background information
tends to be encoded along with the relevant
information.
• According to the encoding-specificity principle of
LTM, memory performance is better when the
contextual cues present during encoding and during
retrieval are the same.
Long-term memory
Association principle of LTM
• Each concept, idea or piece of information stored in memory
is represented as a node and each node or idea is connected
to other nodes by links referred as associations.
• Together, all the nodes and all the associations form a
complex associative network, in which all pieces of general
knowledge are interrelated with other pieces.
• Ideas that are closely related are connected directly by a
single association.
• Ideas that are less closely related are connected by a series of
associations between many related concepts.
Long-term memory
The priming effect
• Retrieving product information from memory begins with the
activation of a node.
• Activation refers to the transfer of information from inactive
LTM to active STM.
• However, once one node is activated, other closely related
nodes are activated also – activation spreads.
• Currently active concepts prime or facilitate the activation of
closely related concepts.
• Once a concept has been activated, it influences how we think
about other topics.
Long-term memory activation
The priming effect
• Judgment often involves comparing a target stimulus with
some comparison stimulus, and different comparison stimuli
are primed or activated in different situations.
• When the target and the primed concept are similar,
perceived similarities are exaggerated if the target is
ambiguous.
• When the target is unambiguous or when the primed concept
is extreme or unusual, perceived differences are exaggerated.
Long-term memory activation
Associative interference
• The rate at which activation spreads across a particular node
increases as number of related concepts linked to that node
increases.
• It takes time to find (activate) a particular node in a rich,
elaborate, associative network.
• The bigger the associative network, the longer it takes to find
a particular node.
• Rumors?
Implicit memory
• When people consciously try to retrieve information from
LTM to perform an explicit memory task – such as a
recognition, cued recall, or free recall task – memory serves as
an object of attention. People are aware that they are
focusing on and consulting memory.
• However, memory is also often used as a tool for making
judgments and decisions. When we use memory as a tool to
perform implicit memory task, we are not aware that we are
using memory, and we do not realize that we are being
influenced by prior experiences and memories.
Consumer judgment
• A judgment refers to the location of a target object
or issue on a cognitive continuum.
• Some cognitive continua are nonevaluative, such as
the concepts “safe”, “gentle”, or “effective”, and are
referred to as beliefs.
• Consumers hold many beliefs.
• Beliefs are important because they often serve as
building blocks for more complex judgments, such as
attitudes (evaluative judgments) and preferences
(evaluative judgments involving more than one
product).
Nonevaluative judgment (belief)
• The type of consumer beliefs marketers are interested in are
beliefs about product attributes and benefits (consequences
of attributes).
• All products have attributes, or features, that are of concern
to consumers.
• Beliefs can be measured on a scale. The scales are continuous.
• Types of beliefs:
– informational beliefs – based on indirect, secondhand experience,
– descriptive beliefs – based on direct, firsthand experience with a
product, often stronger than informational,
– inferential beliefs – beliefs that go beyond information given or the
information that is available from firsthand or secondhand sources.
Inferences about missing information can be made on basis of
correlated presented information, e.g. when price of a product is
known and quality is unknown, consumers often use price to infer
quality.
Evaluative judgment (attitude)
• Evaluative judgment has two main components:
direction (e.g. god or bad, positive or negative) and
extremity (e.g. slightly good, fairly good, very good,
extremely good)
• An evaluation is always made with respect to some
target object or issue.
• The object can be general or specific, physical object
or an abstract issue.
• People can form attitudes toward any object or issue.
• Attitudes can be based on many different types of
information.
Preference judgment
• Preferences are evaluative judgments concerning two or more
objects.
• Preferences always involve making comparisons between
objects.
• Sometimes attitudes serve as building blocks for preferences,
and sometimes preferences are based on comparisons of
attributes or features of two or more products.
– Attitude-based preferences – preferences formed on basis of
consumers’ overall attitudes toward two or more products.
– Attribute-based preferences – preferences formed on the basis
of comparing one ore more attributes of two or more brands
are know.
How are preference determined
• To form attitude-based preferences consumers must
have previously formed attitudes toward each relevant
alternative stored in long-term memory.
• If attitudes are unavailable, preferences cannot be based
on attitudes.
• If we form preferences based on product attributes:
– Unique attributes – such attributes that are included in the
description of one product, but omitted from the description of
the other product.
– Shared attributes are those that are common to both products.
– Shared attributes have litter influence on preference judgments,
it’s the unique attributes that have greater impact.
Satisfaction judgment
• Satisfaction involves comparing a chosen product with a
rejected product. The chosen product is the product the
consumer actually purchased. The rejected product is a
product that was considered for purchase but was not
chosen.
– If the chosen product seems superior to the rejected one, the
consumer will be satisfied.
– However, if the chosen product seems inferior to the rejected
alternative, the consumer will experience dissatisfaction or
regret.
• Satisfaction is important, because it influences repeat
purchase.
Prediction and intention judgment
• Predictions about future events influence many other
types of judgments, including expectancies, attributions,
and intentions.
• Good consumer decision making requires accurate
probability or likelihood judgments about a wide variety
of events, such as accurate predictions about future
product performance, prediction about when a product
requires replacement, about behaviors of others, about
one’s own future behaviors, etc.
• However, people are not very good at this type of
judgment task. The often form impossible judgments.
Prediction and intention judgment
• Reasons, why prediction is so difficult, are that people
use heuristics – cognitive shortcuts, used to generate
predictions, used with little mental effort and awareness.
– Representativeness heuristic – judgment based on similarities,
i.e. if a new product reminds us of an old brand we really liked,
we tend to predict that the new product will perform well, too.
– Availability heuristic – forming predictions based on the ease
with which instances can be retrieved from memory.
– Anchoring and adjustment heuristic – involves forming an initial
judgment or first impression (an anchor) and then shifting
(adjusting) this judgment upward or downward depending on
the implications of imagined possibilities.
Judgments and behavior
• Many studies show that the relationship between
attitudes and behaviors is often only weak though.
• Why attitudes fail to predict behavior:
– behavior is multiply determined (not only by attitudes),
– individuals are very different from each other,
– strong attitudes influence behavior but weak attitudes do not.
• Norms – rules that dictate what actions are appropriate
or inappropriate.
– Social norms are unwritten rules adopted by a group of people.
– Personal norms are adopted codes of conduct by specific
individuals rather than by social groups.
– Sometimes attitudes and norms conflict, then norms usually
win.
– Social and personal norm can be viewed as constraints, or rules
that prevent us from doing certain things in particular
situations.
Judgments and behavior
• Individual differences and personality
processes also influence the extent to which
attitudes guide behavior.
• Properties of attitudes influence the degree to
which attitudes guide behavior – strong
attitudes guide behavior, weak attitudes don’t.
The theory of reasoned action
The person’s (1) beliefs that
the behavior leads to certain
outcomes and (2)
evaluations of these
outcomes.
Attitude toward
the behavior
Intention
The person’s beliefs that
specific individuals or groups
think he or she should or
should not perform the
behavior and his or her
motivation to comply with
specific references.
Behavior
Subjective norm
The theory suggests that attitudes influence behavior through on effortful process.
Consumer choice
• Consumer choice involves selecting one product from a
set of possibilities.
• Unlike judgment, which is continuous, choice is
discrete – consumers either buy the product or they
don’t.
• Sometimes, choice is based on judgment, at other
times, choice is attribute based.
• Understanding consumer choice involves
understanding three key issues:
– what products or brands are considered for purchase,
– what information is used to detect differences among
considered alternatives, and
– how this information is used.
The consideration set
• A consideration set is the group of products a
consumer considers in making a purchase decision.
• Typically ranges from one to about nine (because of
limited information processing capacity).
• Because consumers consider so few products,
marketing managers have to be creative to get
consumers to consider their brands rather than
competitors’ offerings.
• Heavy promotion for one brand can increase
memorability of the brand and decreases memory
for other brands.
Stimulus-based vs. memory-based choice
• After the consideration set has been determined, consumers
need to focus on differences between considered alternatives.
• Some brands have features or options other brands lack, and
these options help consumers detect differences between
brands.
• Focusing on differences is so important that consumers are
willing to use any attribute, even trivial ones, to discriminate
between brands that are otherwise quite similar.
• Typically, however, consumers focus on important differences,
unimportant differences are considered only when important
ones do not exist.
Stimulus-based vs. memory-based choice
• Stimulus-based choice – takes place when all relevant
brand and attribute information is directly observable. It
is relatively easy to detect differences between
alternatives, because direct comparison is possible.
• Memory-based choice – takes place when none of the
information the consumer needs is directly available and
comparisons between alternatives must be performed by
retrieving relevant information from memory.
• Mixed choice – the most common type of choice
scenario, it has elements of both above mentioned
choices.
Attitude-based vs. attribute-based choice
• Attitude-based choice – when consumers choose
a product to purchase and their decision strategy
is based on their previously formed attitudes
toward the considered alternatives.
• Attribute-based choice – when consumers base
their choice on a comparison of specific
attributes or features offered by the considered
alternatives.
Choice heuristics
• Sometimes consumers are unwilling or unable to use complex
and effortful decision strategies and prefer to make quick and
easy decisions that do not require a lot of thought or effort.
• To solve this, consumers use choice heuristics.
• Heuristics enable them to make decisions quickly and easily.
Of course, when one uses minimal information, he risks
overlooking something important and making a bad decision.
• There is a number of often used heuristics, such as:
compensatory and noncompensatory strategies, attitude
heuristic, frequency of good and bad features heuristic,
lexicographic heuristic, lexicographic semiorder heuristic,
elimination-by-aspects heuristic, additive-difference heuristic,
majority of confirming dimensions heuristic, conjunctive
heuristic, phased strategies, etc.
Determinants of choice strategy
• Processing goals – they are influenced by variables such as
involvement (personal relevance or importance of a decision)
and accountability (a requirement to justify or explain one’s
decision to others). Both goals increase one’s motivation to
make good decisions, even if a lot of time and effort is
required.
• Processing load – refers to the amount of limited cognitive
capacity needed form information processing. Processing load
increases as decision difficulty increases.
• Contextual variables – information about product can be
presented in many different ways, and the manner in which
information is presented influences how this information is
processed. Names, frames, and descriptions produce
powerful effects on choice.