 Hi, welcome. My name is Dr. Marcy Stone and this is Unit 2, the consumer learning process of your consumer behavior course. This course has 10 units and Unit 2 is on the consumer learning process. Here are the Unit 2 learning outcomes. So identify why it's important for marketers to understand how consumers learn about products and services. Explain that learned associations can generalize to other insights and why this is important to marketers. Compare the differences between classical and instrumental conditioning. Explain why it's important for marketers to recognize that products can satisfy a range of consumer needs. Evaluate how the way we assess and choose a product depends upon our degree of involvement with the product, the marketing message, and or the purchase situation. Why are learning outcomes important? So every learning outcome ties back to your course materials and your content, and this includes your assessments and your test preparation. Here are the Unit 2 overview topics that we're going to be covering in this presentation. So understanding how consumers learn about products and services, learned associations that lead to other insights, classical and instrumental conditioning differences, products that satisfy a range of consumer needs, and then marketing degree of involvement. And then these are the vocabulary terms that we're going to be discussing in this presentation. Alright, understanding how consumers learn about products and services. So as consumers, we may learn about products through various ways. This might include reviews, friends, social media, coworkers, TV, or a celebrity endorsement. A consumer may hear about a product and then conduct research to determine if this is something they want. Consumer research might be conducted through additional product reviews, online searches, or watching videos that show the product in use. In marketing, it's important to understand the consumer learning process and the level of involvement a consumer may use before determining if they will buy a product. These levels of involvement may include high and low, and they're typically associated with the cost of a product. For example, a product that costs $20 may be a low level of involvement for most consumers, while a home or a car purchase will force a higher level of involvement in the decision making process. By better understanding how a consumer learns about a product, you will be able to better promote the product. Learned associations lead to other insights. Consumers may develop learned association through marketing. For example, if several times a day you see an advertisement for Pepsi, by the end of the day you may crave that soda. So understanding these learned associations is important when you're developing a marketing strategy for a product or service. Once a consumer connects with a particular product, they may be more likely to try other products associated with that brand, and this will lead to brand loyalty. In addition, the more people that are interested in a certain product, the more popular that product may become. Consumers may also have poor associations that affect their interaction with a product or brand. For example, when a person drinks soda and they always have an upset stomach, that association will keep them from drinking soda in the future, and any advertisement about that soda will not work. When internal and external factors are associated with the learning process, cognitive learning theory occurs. For example, if a consumer purchases a product that works well, they may repurchase the product repeatedly because they have learned that it works well. So in marketing, it's important to understand how these internal and external factors affect the consumer's learning process. Okay, so now we have classical and instrumental conditioning differences. So every person's been conditioned in some sense, and this might include through their parents, through social media, friends, maybe their education, or even advertising. So for example, if as a child you went to the beach every summer on vacation, you may associate the beach with happy times. And just looking at a picture of the beach may create a positive emotional experience. This is called behavioral learning theory, and it occurs through our past experiences, and we may associate a stimulus with a reward or a punishment. Classical conditioning also elicits a behavioral response. For example, you may not be hungry, but if you smell something that's potentially delicious, you may immediately begin to salivate and believe that you are truly hungry. Instrumental conditioning occurs when we associate a good or a bad situation with something that's happened in the past. For example, if an employee has always received positive annual reviews, they will associate the process as positive. Or if a consumer has a bad experience with a product in the past, whenever they hear the name of that brand or product, they may immediately believe that it's not a good product. So instrumental conditioning occurs because they learned a response, and classical conditioning occurs with an auto response that cannot be controlled because of a reaction that they have to a past situation. Okay, so classical conditioning. You may remember this from a basic psychology class back in the day. B.F. Skinner had this test where he would, before the conditioning, he would put food out, notice that the dogs were salivating, just seeing the food, and then he decided to try a test of what if we ring a bell and then bring out the food. And sure enough, within a few tries of this, just by ringing the bell, not even seeing the food, the dog was already salivating. So this is a perfect example. And it is why we call classical conditioning what it is today. In this example, the dogs were conditioned with the use of a bell. So they got them used to, it's here, they bring the bell, bring out the food, they got the dogs used to the fact that they heard the bell and they knew the food was coming. So they would salivate without even seeing the food. It's actually a really interesting study. Okay, products that satisfy a range of consumer needs. Consumer needs may change depending on surroundings or situations. For example, if a consumer buys a new house, even though they have a furniture, they may feel the need to buy new furniture to fit certain spaces. Or if a consumer watches a video on YouTube or TikTok, and suddenly they decide that they need to buy a product that yesterday they may not even have been aware of. This is an example of effective advertising that works. By better understanding consumer needs, you may create a strategic marketing plan that's specific to your product. If a product solves more than one need or problem, a consumer may become very excited about that product and tell others about their experience. The diversity of the product should be advertised in the marketing plan. Marketing degree of involvement. So over the last few decades, consumer choices have expanded greatly and as a result can take time to choose a specific product. Consumers may analyze various products, talk to other people about their experience with those products. They might watch product reviews online or they may simply choose one without taking the time to research any options. From a marketing perspective, it's important to understand how consumers research and make purchasing decisions. The level of involvement that a consumer needs to explore options is another area a marketer should understand. When a consumer makes purchasing decisions, their level of involvement may be high or low. For products that are less expensive, a low level of involvement is required. More expensive purchases such as a home or a car may require a higher level of involvement before they make that purchasing decision. So we've talked about this a little bit already, but a $20 product is obviously a low level of involvement of cost for most people. And a $500,000 house will take considerably more time for research and to make that decision. When there are too many products on the market, a consumer may have a difficult time making a decision and sometimes they will not make a purchase at all because it's overwhelming. It's important to consider the marketing message that shows value or product differentiation when there are similar products available on the market. All right, so we talked a little bit in the last unit about that consumer decision making process, which you can see here at the bottom in those five steps. And we talked about the first they have the need recognition, it goes all the way until they make the purchase and then like they have post decision behaviors. But here are some of the factors that may influence their consumer decision. So you've got situational factors here, you've got personal factors, you've got psychological factors, social factors. Any of these things, whether it is their lifestyle or family or friends are influencing what they might want to buy or even social media. Sometimes we give the example of sometimes you feel like you need to buy a product just because you saw it online. It didn't really solve a problem for you, but you were you watch the video, you were like, oh my gosh, that's like the greatest thing ever and you want to buy it. And it's a product that yesterday you weren't even aware of that's effective social media marketing. So all of these things will influence that consumer decision making process. And from a marketing perspective, it's really important to consider these things when you're developing your specific marketing strategy for your product or for your brand. Okay, in conclusion, so here are the unit two learning outcomes that we cover today. So we talked a little bit about why it's important to understand how consumers learn about products and services. We talked about learned associations and the differences between classical and instrumental conditioning. We also talked about why it's important to recognize that products can satisfy a wide range of needs. And then we also talked about the level of marketing that like the level of degree of involvement in marketing, the marketing message and the purchasing situation. Okay, and what's next? So unit three is on understanding the consumer. My name is Dr. Marcy Stone and I just wanted to say thanks for listening.