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CS 4-1. Do consumers build associative networks from their avatar’s experience? If so, the
associations from their avatar experience by any different from other shopping experiences?
How would these networks impact the consumer’s ability to organize and retrieve information
that they have learned?
Avatar’s will create different shopping experiences and the consumer will be able to
(10 minutes, Chapter Objective 7, AACSB: Reflective Thinking)
Additional Support Material
STUDENT PROJECTS
Individual Projects
1. Ask students to visit a grocery store or a similar retail setting and discretely observe the
behavior of individual shoppers and groups of shoppers for an extended period. Have
them record any behaviors that they witness that could be examples of the following
concepts: vicarious learning, incidental learning, classical conditioning, and instrumental
conditioning. Have students present their findings to the class or discuss them in groups.
Some of these learning examples may be challenging to observe directly. Students may
need to draw on their own exposure to marketing communications and make inferences
(45 minutes, Chapter Objectives 1 2, 4 and 5, AACSB: Application of Knowledge
2. Have students recall their first act of “green” consumption. Ask them to list the product
involved and the sequence of actions they took. Ask them why they remembered it and
how significant that was to their subsequent behaviors.
This individual project can be modified to reflect a number of consumption acts. If you
choose to use green consumption, it provides an opportunity to tie the exercise to the
(45 minutes, Chapter Objective 7, AACSB: Reflective Thinking)
3. Ask students to narrate the sequence of events that led to their first access and
registration at a social networking site (www.facebook.com, www.myspace.com,
www.orkut.com or others). Have them list some of the positive and negative
reinforcements they have encountered at the site since they joined.
The exercise reinforces applications of instrumental conditioning of the consumer
decision-making process, which will be explored in greater depth later in the text. It is
(25 minutes, Chapter Objective 4, AACSB: Reflective Thinking)
4. Have students devise their own classical conditioning experiments involving a “green”
product such as organic milk or similar products. Let them utilize UCS, CS, and CR.
Look for students to identify the part of their experiment that is the unconditioned
(30 minutes, Chapter Objective 2, AACSB: Reflective Thinking)
5. Many brands attempt to capitalize on positive associations that consumers have for
competing brands by copying certain characteristics. Have students identify an example
of this and relate it to the halo effect.
Students are likely to bring examples of private label or generic brands that try to
leverage similar packaging to capitalize on consumers’ positive associations with
(15 minutes, Chapter Objective 2, AACSB: Reflective Thinking)
6. Ask students to write their favorite brand name. They should then draw an associative
network around the brand that includes three attributes/features, three benefits, three
competitors, attributes, and benefits for the competing brands, etc. They can be allowed
to add personal opinions and feelings about the brand to the network.
The exercise should help students visualize the web of connections between nodes that
characterize the associative network theory of memory. You can tie the exercise to
(20 minutes, Chapter Objective 7, AACSB: Reflective Thinking)
7. Have students create their schema for “made in the U.S.,” “made in Japan,” and “made in
Germany” cars. What features and attributes would they include in each of the schemas?
Student associations with each schema will vary. Look for students to recognize that a
schema is a cognitive framework that is developed through experience. Remind students
(20 minutes, Chapter Objective 7, AACSB: Reflective Thinking)
8. Assign students to locate a print advertisement that is a clear example of a marketer
employing the concepts of stimulus generalization or stimulus discrimination. Have
students present the ads to the class.
For stimulus generalization, students may select private label/generic brands that are
packaged to look like the national counterpart, examples of companies that use family
(20 minutes, Chapter Objective 2, AACSB: Reflective Thinking and Communication Abilities)
9. Have students identify an example of both positive reinforcement and negative
reinforcement in a marketing context. As students present their findings in class, have
the class discuss how effective each example is at establishing the desired or intended
behavior.
Examples will vary. In addition to looking for students to differentiate between positive
(30 minutes, Chapter Objective 4, AACSB: Reflective Thinking and Communication Abilities)
10. Ask students to observe their friends, roommates, and co-workers for an extended
period to identify an incidence of modeling as it relates to a celebrity. Have them note
how the four conditions of modeling are met. Is the celebrity a brand endorser? How
might their behavior be positive/negative for the marketers of the brands(s) that the
celebrity endorses?
The four conditions the student should include in his/her response include:
The consumer’s attention must be directed to a model that is desirable to
many students recognize that celebrities are given products in the hopes they will use
(90 minutes, Chapter Objective 5, AACSB: Reflective Thinking and Communication Abilities)
11. Have students think of specific examples where their sensory, short-term, and long-term
memory have been activated by marketing information.
Sensory memory is activated when consumers are exposed to marketing stimuli. If the
information passes through an attentional gate, it can be stored acoustically or
(15 minutes, Chapter Objective 6, AACSB: Reflective Thinking)
12. Ask each student to complete the following assignment based on a popular national
brand: Collect as many pieces of promotional material (ads, direct mail, etc.) as possible
for the brand. Based on this promotional evidence, identify any bits of information that
marketers intend to be associated with the brand. Create an associative network for the
brand, integrating the documented nodes of information with other nodes.
This project gives students the opportunity to create a model from marketing stimuli
instead of their memories, which may give them a different perspective on what the
(75 minutes, Chapter Objective 7, AACSB: Reflective Thinking)
13. Assign each student to ask three friends to list as many brands as they can remember for a
product class of their choosing. Have them ask each friend questions about each brand on
the list to get a better idea of why each might have been recalled. Then, have them
identify whether familiarity, salience, or other factors influencing recall were present.
Were there differences between the first brands recalled and the others?
In general, familiarity with a brand, the salience/importance of the brand, and the
(45 minutes, Chapter Objective 9, AACSB: Analytic Skills)
14. Have students identify what they think are strategic efforts by marketers to cause the
consumer to forget about competitor information by interfering with new information of
their own.
Marketers may use similar ad backgrounds and/or claims to try to shift associations
Marketers may also provide information about different brand claims with the idea that
(25 minutes, Chapter Objective 7, AACSB: Reflective Thinking)
Group Projects
1. Create a long list of brand slogans from the past 10 or more years—e.g., Ford, where
quality is job one; I want my MTV; Always Coca-Cola; Pizza-pizza (Little Caesar’s);
BMW: the ultimate driving machine. Divide the class into teams or simply in half.
Read the brand slogans one at a time, omitting the brand name. Award points to the first
team to correctly identify the brand associated with each slogan. Afterward, point out
how memory was strong, even for older slogans (some may be able to identify slogans
from when they were very young children). Discuss why this is the case according to
the principles of memory in the chapter.
Students should recognize that they are retrieving brand information from long-term
memory. They may note differences are cognitive, physiological and situational factors
(20-30 minutes, Chapter Objectives 7 and 9, AACSB: Reflective Thinking
2. Match the brand name to the slogan in class. Provide a list of 10 or 20 brand names
along with as many slogans and have groups match them. As a homework assignment,
they can then be asked to assume the role of an advertising agency and try to develop
better (or humorous) slogans for these products. These can be presented in class and
students can vote on the best slogans that were developed.
This is a fun exercise, and can help reinforce the idea that salience and novelty
(20-30 minutes, Chapter Objectives 7 and 9, AACSB: Reflective Thinking
3. Have student groups design an experiment that would demonstrate the occurrence
of either classical conditioning or instrumental conditioning. Have them conduct
their experiment on members of the class.
Individual project idea #4 asks an individual student to design an experiment to
demonstrate the occurrence of classical conditioning. If students select classical
(45 minutes, Chapter Objectives 2 and 4, AACSB: Reflective Thinking)
4. Have student groups visit a grocery store. How are marketers taking advantage
of consumer ability to “chunk” information through strategies used on
packaging?
Brand names (which represent a chunk of information about the brand), images and
(30 minutes, Chapter Objective 7, AACSB: Reflective Thinking,)
5. Ask groups of students to design an experiment to test the process of state-dependent
retrieval. Have them conduct the experiment on ten individuals, five in a mood-congruent
condition and five in a mood-incongruent condition. Have the groups present their
experiments and findings to the class.
(90 minutes, Chapter Objective 7, AACSB: Analytic Skills and Communication Abilities)
6. Have student groups create a list of things that make them nostalgic. Then, during a
period of a few days, have each of them identify ways that marketers of products targeted
toward them have focused on any of these elements of nostalgia. Can they identify any
nostalgia brands that are focused at their feelings of nostalgia? Have them share their
findings with group members.
Student responses should reflect their understanding that nostalgia describes a
bittersweet emotion where we view the past with both sadness and longing. Student
(20-30 minutes, Chapter Objective 9, AACSB: Reflective Thinking)
eLAB
Individual Assignments
1. Go to www.BEaREP.com . Tens of thousands of new products are introduced every year.
Due to various barriers to entry, the vast majority of new products fail. One company has
an approach that will help new products gain exposure. What is the approach taken by
BEaREP.com? Which learning theory in this chapter can be directly applied to this
approach? Considering this learning theory, how might the BEaREP.com approach work
or not work?
BEaREP.com utilizes a network of consumers who communicate with retailers on behalf
of manufacturers. Consumers are rewarded by the company (Wizard Industries/Sample
(15 minutes, Chapter Objective 4, AACSB: Reflective Thinking)
2. Go to www.levis.com . Levis Strauss is a brand that is 150 years old. However, the long
dominant player in the jeans and apparel industry has struggled in recent years to
regain market share that it has lost to brands that are more youthful. Visit their website
and discuss what strategies the company appears to be using to attract Generation Y
(30 million plus individuals born between 1986 and 2002). What forms of learning is
the company attempting to use to reacquire a youthful audience? Be specific in your
description and provide illustrations of your ideas from the website to support chapter
concepts.
Levis.com promotes its products with appeals to individualism, innovation/progress,
achievement and social activism. They use social media (blogs, Facebook, twitter, and
(25 minutes, Chapter Objective 4, AACSB: Reflective Thinking,)
3. Go to www.gogorillamedia.com . Become familiar with the advertising product
offerings from this company. What previously useless space is this company turning into
valuable advertising space? What advertisers might be most interested in the various
types of ad space options? How would each affect learning and memory? What memory
processes would be most critical to the success of the different ad options?
The URL directs students to a blog for an agency that specializes in non-traditional
media, including guerrilla marketing. Different ad space options may help firms break
(20 minutes, Chapter Objective 5, AACSB: Reflective Thinking)
Group Assignments
1. Go to www.mitchellandness.com . Many companies have incorporated an element of
nostalgia into their strategies to help boost sales. However, this company’s product line
relies entirely on nostalgia. Mitchell and Ness has achieved substantial success with a
line of throwback sports apparel. As a group, create a profile for the market(s) you think
this company is targeting. Explain how nostalgia is the cornerstone of this company’s
success and how this principle works by applying learning and memory processes. Based
on your analysis, design a print ad that emphasizes the “nostalgia” theme for this
company’s products.
The profile will likely include demographic (gender, income, age) and psychographic
(sports fans) variables. Look for students to relate the needs of this target audience to
(20 minutes, Chapter Objective 9, AACSB: Analytic Skills)
