Summary Consumer Behaviour – Week 1-6 (2021)
Week 1: The Psychological Core
The Psychological Core
Consumer behaviour reflects the totality of consumers’ decisions with respect to the acquisition,
consumption, and disposition of goods, services, activities, experiences, people, and ideas by
(human) decision-making units [over time].
➔ The decisions people make in their roles as consumers; not just about why people buy a product,
but about all the decisions in their roles as consumers.
Psychology is the scientific study of the human mind and behaviour → understanding how we get
from exposure (stimuli we see, smell, hear) to action.
Five steps in human information processing (stimuli → response):
1. Sensation
- Five basic senses: vision, hearing, smell, taste, touch.
- Neurological process: when a signal comes in, specific areas in our brain are dedicated on
receiving those signals. E.g. motor cortex, auditory cortex, sensory cortex, visual cortex.
➔ Sensation is about the incoming signals.
2. Perception
- How the human mind interprets signals from the senses. Sensation is just about signals,
perception is about the interpretation.
- Example: picture of a cow, in which you can see two faces → assign different meanings
(interpretation) to the same sensory input.
- Two ways of thinking about perception:
o Bottom-up processing: start from the senses (signals enters your brain), which leads
to an activation of a certain part in the brand (auditory cortex) → interpret the
stimulus based on the sensory signals.
o Top-down processing: look inside your brain and assign meaning to sensory input
based on stuff that is already stored in your memory (contextual factors) →
interpretation based on pre-existing knowledge, associative networks and
expectations.
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,3. Memory
- The brain is a complicated system of interconnected cells. Memory is the neural network of
associated nodes; everything in our memory is linked to each other. It is an associative
network rather than standalone pieces of information.
- Distinction between:
o Long-term memory: where information is permanently stored for later use.
▪ Explicit memory, e.g. memory for specific events and experiences, or
memory for concepts and facts.
▪ Implicit memory, e.g. procedural (how to do things), priming, emotional
conditioning.
o Working memory: involved in goal-directed behaviours in which information must
be retained and manipulated to ensure successful task execution; what is linking
everything together, e.g. retaining information, getting information from long-term
memory in our action centre.
Attention: attention reflects how much mental activity is devoted to a stimulus. Attention is limited
(not endless attention, choose what to pay attention to), selective (not pay attention to infinite
number of things), attention can be divided (among several things).
➔ “Marketing is a contest for people’s attention.”
Memory and Consumer Behaviour
Implicit memory: beliefs and attitudes exist in (implicit) associative networks. Activation of one
concept activates related concepts. For marketers, it is interesting to build favourable associations
(associative networks) in the mind of the consumer.
Associate networks for brands can be influenced by marketing actions, e.g. North Face is
building an association with the feeling of outdoor/exploring. RedBull is trying to build an
association with thrill-seeking and adventure. Celebrity endorsements build associations
between the endorser and the brand.
Priming: stimulus exposure affects responses to a later stimulus. It is the act of introducing a stimulus
to influence how individuals respond to a subsequent stimulus.
E.g., music with strong national associations activates related knowledge and led to
customers buying wine from the respective country → German music led to increase in
German wine sales, French music led to increase in French wine sales.
Procedural (schemas on how to do things), e.g. Cup-A-Soup building in a moment into people’s daily
habits → build into people’s procedures.
Sensory marketing (article Krishna, 2012)
Sensory marketing: marketing that engages the consumers’ senses and affects their perception,
judgement, and behaviour in a subconscious way (outside conscious awareness). → understanding of
consumer senses and perception and has an impact on consumer behaviour, without the consumer
being aware of it.
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,1) Haptics: touch
- Touch is the first sense a person develops in
the womb and the last sense someone loses
with age.
- Interpersonal touch is related to oxytocin,
which promotes feelings of love, social
bonding, and well-being. People who
receive interpersonal touch…
o Leave higher tips
o Are more satisfied
o Comply with requests to sample or buy
o Take their medications
o Help others
o Let others cut in line
➔ Touch creates a sense of interpersonal connection.
- Touching an object increases perceived ownership of that object, e.g. holding something in
your hand → endowment effect: assign higher value to a product. Touchscreens increase
psychological ownership, and this in turn magnifies the endowment effect. So, even just
shopping while using a touchscreen increases psychological ownership compared to
shopping using a desktop.
2) Olfaction: smell
- Memory for scents persists longer than memory for other sensations. Memories triggered by
scent are more emotional than memory triggered from other senses.
- There is a direct connection between olfactory nerve and amygdala and hippocampus; areas
in the brain that are associated with smell are physically close to areas in the brain that are
associated with emotions (amygdala) and memory (hippocampus).
- Scent increases memory for associated information; if you have a certain memory and there
is a certain smell associated with it, that also triggers other thoughts about that memory. If a
memory is associated with a certain smell, that memory is stronger and increases memory
for other information of that experience.
- Scent can trigger emotions, can enhance products and store evaluations and can enhance
shopping time and variety seeking. For example scent marketing: smell of fresh bread in the
supermarket, smell of popcorn in the cinema → enhances experience and potentially
increases sales.
3) Audition: hearing
People attach meaning to sounds, e.g. sound of ‘crispy’ is associated with freshness or sound logo of
Netflix. Sound is heavily used in marketing and can affect consumer behaviour.
4) Taste
Taste is the least developed sense we have as human beings. An example of taste is found in the
study of Lee, Frederick, & Ariely (2007): information you get beforehand (“there is balsamic vinegar
in your beer”) affects your experience more than the actual taste of the beer. People cannot even
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, distinguish beer that has balsamic vinegar in it and beer that has not → our taste is susceptible to
being influenced by other senses.
5) Vision
A dominant sense in several contexts: many of the marketing stimuli are visual stimuli. We attach
meaning to colours through learned associations and biological predispositions → colours are
important in marketing. Example: yellow (clarity, warmth, optimism), orange (friendly, cheerful,
enthusiasm), red (energy, passion, appetite), green (health, nature, wealth), etc.
Construal Level Theory (article Trobe, Liberman, & Wakslak, 2007)
Construal Level Theory is about how we perceive the world around us; interpretation/perception
stage of Human Information Processing model.
• People use concrete, low-level construals to mentally represent near object and events.
• People use abstract, high-level construals to mentally represent distant objects and events.
➔ The way we think about stuff is influenced by how close or far away something is to ourselves:
psychological distance.
High psychological distance (something is far away): using high-level construals, in an abstract,
integrated and idealistic way → “why do we do things?” (not part of someone’s direct experience)
Low psychological distance (something is close): using low-level construals, in a concrete, contextual,
pragmatic way → “how do we do things?”
Psychological distance is a subjective experience that something is close or far away from the self,
here, and now.
1. Temporal distance: time (today vs. next year). E.g., when thinking about pizza for tonight
(‘how do I order?’, ‘where do I order?’) vs. next year (food, unhealthy.
2. Social distance: how close/similar someone is to yourself. E.g., kidnapping: unknown person
(don’t negotiate with terrorists) vs. close relative (how do we get the money?) → the way we
think about the same sort of event is influenced by social distance. When it is a close relative,
thoughts will be more concrete than when it is someone unknown.
3. Spatial distance: distance in kilometres. E.g., refugees: another country (we should help
these people) vs. close to home (what about the value of my house?) → refugees are the
same, but the way you perceive it depends on spatial distance. If it is far away, we think
more abstract about it.
4. Hypothetical distance: how likely something is to happen. E.g., breaking in: safe
neighbourhood (how to prevent crime in society) vs. unsafe neighbourhood (put an extra
lock on the door – more concrete way).
➔ Psychological distance dimensions influence the way we think about objects and events.
Primary vs. secondary features: purchases in the distant future focus perception on primary features
of a potential purchase, e.g. screen size, full HD resolution when buying a tv. Purchases in the near
future also focus on secondary features of a potential purchase, e.g. discounts, where to buy it.
➔ Determined by temporal distance.
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