So I wake up today and the first thing I do is reach out for my glasses, put them on and grab my phone from under the pillow which I place out of habit because I tend to sleep through my alarms. As I scroll through the BBC news app, I realise that today I'm free as a bird! No class to worry about, no work to do and no grocery shopping to think about. I then wash up and head straight for the TV remote.
As I watch a series of shows, I come across various commercials some of which are inexplicable! I mean why would businesses spend hundreds and thousands of dollars on advertising without getting the message across well. I begin playing on my phone and no sooner do I hear a catchy song playing on TV. Who would have thought it was a bread commercial? If you don't believe me, watch it for yourself in the video below.
In the book Consumer Behaviour by Solomon, White and Dahl, the author explains how consumers respond to brand names, scents and jingles on the basis of learned associations over time.
Believe it or not, the song was engraved in the back of my head! Every time I'm out getting groceries, the song is playing in my head when I reach the bread section "1,2,3,4,5 and 6 and 7...". Because this song is associated with the Dempsters brand and the lyrics contain diction that relate to my needs, I feel motivated to choose it over the varieties of other bread available. The repetition in the tune and lyrics create a sort of learning activity to the memory thus giving more exposure to the brand. No one even had to come and push me to choose Dempsters specifically but the psychological effect communicates to the conscious mind about the product and before you know it, I was convinced enough that Dempsters will satisfy my needs. I believe the implementation of this jingle was a form of classical conditioning as every time I sang the jingle, it would make me feel hungry for the foods I like with this brand of bread. Singing about food like making quinoa would trigger my belly to start making obnoxious grumbling sounds and that's when I noticed how this advertising strategy affected my mind and memory.
There are other techniques used in triggering the memory to remember a brand's identity. The book of Consumer Behaviour defines Instrumental conditioning by explaining that individuals will learn to perform behaviours that produce positive outcomes and will avoid those that produce negative outcomes. This is a form of operant conditioning where our psychological thought processing adapts to performing actions that would result in a positive outcome and this is one method in which our memory is influenced. We, as consumers, react when something results in a positive outcome as we consider our happiness and satisfaction over anything. Take a look at Penny in the show Big Bang Theory and see how she is unconsciously being manipulated by Sheldon by being awarded with a treat every time she does something right. Something that you will not notice is that the stimuli is paired with time. The clip doesn't show how long it took Penny to be conditioned to operate with chocolate but rationally speaking, it would take time for one to be influenced using instruments.
Similarly, businesses condition us to react in a certain manner by introducing rewards because incentives enable us to do what will result in a positive outcome. Shoppers have their reward program, Scotiabank have free movies that you earn as you make purchases with their card and Subway offer free cookies if you complete their survey. So not only do they encourage you to spend more but they also use incentives to generate feedback from their customers.
Sometimes when I have time on my hand, I would actually complete the survey cause I get a cookie to add to my meal. The fact that I am aware of the rewards available to me, it means that these incentives serve to store in my long term memory. Sometimes we are unaware of how we are conditioned and I believe it is vital for us as consumers to be conscious about these strategies and behave accordingly.
Analogy cues are used widely in advertising to help consumers understand the product's concept. Many at times the analogy remains in the memory and depending on the degree of accuracy of the two items, it will be stored in the short-term memory or long-term memory. A commercial was released in Kenya regarding the durability of a condom brand and the technique in which it is advertised helps the consumer believe in the product. I discussed this commercial with a few other people and the response I got was that they use that specific brand because of the way the company gives the consumer the confidence in the functionality. Take a look at the video below. Excuse the quality of the video, it was released quite a while ago.
The strength of the umbrella cover is compared to the condom itself thus giving the consumer the idea that they can trust the product's strength. It's amazing how creative companies can be to create a brand awareness and create brand loyalty in just 1minute. The humour in this commercial and the analogy would definitely create an impact on one's memory response as it did to the friends I spoke to earlier and through frequency marketing, the brand sticks within your memory to enable future purchases. Oh the wonders of advertising!
Watch out for another blog soon!
Sources:
Consumer Behaviour, Solomon,White,Dahl. Sixth Canadian Edition. 2014 Pearson Canada.
The amount of subverted influence marketers possess over consumers is truly astounding. Just yesterday I approached the hat store Lids in order to obtain a new Baseball cap yet upon deciding the hat that would fit me appropriately and looked the "coolest" I was immediately told that the hats were buy one get one half off. Suddenly I felt a great urge to purchase another hat. Did I need two hats? No. Would I need one in the future? Perhaps. Of course if I had not been told about this deal then it would never have crossed my mind to purchase two hats due to the lack of their use but this persuaded me otherwise. Great explanation of the use of rewards in order to strongly influence decisions! Rewards could be anything as simple as an xbox "achievement" where completing certain missions on a video game would result in a higher gamer score. While rewards such as these have absolutely no value, they are still sought out by people including myself simply because they exist.
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