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.