Chapter 3

Sensation

A consumer's immediate response to a stimulus.

Orientation Reflex

A natural response to a threat from the environment.

Conditioned Stimulus

A object or event that does not cause the desired response naturally but that can be conditioned to do so by pairing with an unconditioned stimulus.

Shaping

A process where the desired behavior is altered over time, in small increments.

Unconditioned Response

A response that occurs naturally as a result of exposure to an unconditioned stimulus.

Conditioned Response

A response that results from exposure to a conditioned stimulus that was originally associated with the unconditioned stimulus.

Unconditioned Stimulus

A stimulus with which a behavioral response is already associated.

Sensory Marketing

Actively seeking to engage customers' senses as the primary aspect of the value proposition.

Involuntary Attention

Attention that is autonomic, meaning beyond the conscious control of a consumer.

Subliminal Persuasion

Behavior change induced or brought about based on subliminally processing a message.

Instrumental Conditioning

Behavior is conditioned through reinforcement.

Extinction

Behaviors cease due to lack of reinforcement.

Intentional Learning

Consumers set out to specifically learn information devoted to a certain subject.

Unintentional Learning

Consumers simply sense and react (or respond) to the environment.

Discriminative Stimuli

Differentiate one stimulus from other stimuli because they signal the presence of a reinforcer.

Selective Attention

Involves paying attention to only certain stimuli.

Selective Exposure

Involves screening out most stimuli and exposing oneself to only a small portion of stimuli.

Information Processing (or Cognitive) Perspective

Learning perspective that focuses on the cognitive processes associated with comprehension and how these precipitate behavioral changes.

Preattentive Effects

Learning that is developed in the absence of attention.

Explicit Memory

Memory for information one is exposed to, attends to, and applies effort to remember.

Contrast

Occurs when a stimulus does not share enough in common with existing categories to allow categorization.

Selective Distortion

Process where consumers interpret information in ways that are biased by their previously held beliefs.

Learning

Refers to a change in behavior resulting from the interaction between a person and a stimulus.

Classical Conditioning

Refers to a change in behavior that occurs simply through associating some stimulus with another stimulus that naturally causes a reaction.

Perception

Refers to a consumer's awareness and interpretation of reality.

Anthropomorphism

Refers to a design that gives humanlike characteristics to inanimate objects.

Involvement

Refers to the personal relevance a consumer feels towards a particular product.

Positive Reinforcers

Reinforcers that take the form of a reward.

Product Placements

Represent another way that promotions can impart implicit memory among consumers.

Punishers

Represent stimuli that decrease the likelihood that a behavior will occur again.

Mere Exposure Effect

Represents another way that consumers can learn unintentionally; leads consumers to prefer a stimulus to which they've previously been exposed.

JND (Just Noticeable Difference)

Represents how much stronger one stimulus has to be relative to another so that someone can notice that the two are not the same.

Implicit Memory

Represents stored information concerning stimuli one is exposed to but does not pay attention to.

JMD (Just Meaningful Difference)

Represents the smallest amount of change in a stimulus that would influence consumer consumption and choice.

Absolute Threshold

The minimum strength needed for a consumer to perceive a stimulus.

Cognitive Organization

The process by which the human brain assembles the sensory evidence into something recognizable.

Exposure

The process of bringing some stimulus within the proximity of a consumer so that it can be sensed by one of the five human senses.

Attention

The purposeful allocation of information-processing capacity toward developing an understanding of some stimulus.

Mere Association Effect

The transfer of meaning between objects that are similar only by accidental association.

Subliminal Processing

The way in which the human brain senses low-strength stimuli, that is, stimuli that occur below the level of conscious awareness.

Behaviorist Approach to Learning

Theory of learning that focuses on changes in behavior due to association without great concern for the cognitive mechanics of the learning process.

Weber's Law

This law states that as the intensity of the initial stimulus increases, a consumer's ability to detect differences between two levels of the stimulus decreases.