Impact of Behavioral and Cognitive Learning Theories in Consumer Behaviour
Behavioral and cognitive learning theories are the two approaches to the study of learning. According to behavioral theory, learning occurs in response to happenings or events in an individual’s external environment, while in cognitive, learning occurs due to an individual’s deliberate and conscious information storage and processing activity (Nicholson & Xiao, 2011). This essay therefore, explains the behaviorist and cognitive theorists’ implications to marketers.
Cognitive learning enables consumers to use the stored information to develop new knowledge utilized for the present behaviour or keep it in the memory as extra information for later use. Generally, the effect of cognitive learning is directly related to decision making while the chance of remembering the product significantly increases the probability of purchasing the product by consumer. The purchased service or product that an individual remembers directly decides his or her future selection. In circumstances where buyers do not take into account the alternatives that are physically present and being provided to them, their evaluation and decisions may totally depend on the past remembered experience and knowledge. Therefore, marketers should expose consumers to information concerning new services or products as well as changes in existing services or services on daily basis. Besides, the marketers need to update the consumers about their brands such as features, price, attributes and comparison with other brands.
Behavioral theory on the other hand stipulates that consumption behaviour and pattern of a person is much wider and difficult to predict. According to the theory, the consumer behaviour relies on the stimulus generalization, repetition and stimulus discrimination. As eluded by Kotler (2009), consumers are more active entities who seek information and make purchases after cautious evaluation of alternatives. Consumers do not look for opportunity costs or rewards most of the time but make decision on the purchase regardless of the reward. Furthermore, they are driven out of the social forces and would wish to imitate and copy the behavior of their friends, reference group, and parents and purchase some brands from certain shops.
In summary, behavioral and cognitive learning theories are very important in marketing process; they must be well understood by the marketers for businesses high performance and customer retention. The marketers need to understand and appreciate the different behaviors manifested by customers since every customer has a unique cognitive and behavioral personality.
References
Kotler, P. (2009). Marketing management. Upper Saddle River, N.J: Prentice Hall.
Nicholson, M., & Xiao, S. H. (2011). Consumer behaviour analysis and social marketing practice. Service Industries Journal, 12(5), 123-125. doi:10.1080/02642069.2011.531124
