Course : Consumer Behaviour Institution 

: Tunis Business School

Responsible for the course : Dr. Bouthaina M’saad Department : Business Administration

Assignment 2 : Chapter 3 : learning and memory Level : Junior

Univ year : 2021/2022

1. As an example of Classical Conditioning, explore the https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mDQDTPWNcQ0. Describe how this

learning theory is being used and how it may impact a consumer

1.Classical Condtionning theory

Michael phelps (US) rule your self (UR)

Michael phelps + brand (under armour) (CS) rule your self (UR)

Underarmour(CS) rule your self (CR)

2. Observational learning

We can learn via observation how it’s what we do in the dark that put us in the light

Question 2

Starbucks is a brand that considerably applies the behavioral learning theories in marketing its product. Describe the starbucks’
marketing applications of classical and openant conditioning theories

Behavioral Learning Theory – Classical conditioning:

Starbucks is one of the most successful brands. Its strong brand reputation also becomes the ultimate competitive
advantage in the highly competitive coffee and tea market. Starbucks provides its customers an extraordinary range of
experience, such as tasty drink tailor-made just for you, store atmosphere, and nice conversation with Starbucks’
associates. As a result, customers emotionally connect with the brand because it repeatedly provides something that the
customers want. This would be a good example of classical conditioning that a good experience is consistently paired
with condition stimulus which brand names. When customers see Starbucks’ logo, they are confident that they will
definitely gain another good experience and prefer buying Starbucks’ product to other brands. To our minds, it would be
more attractive if Starbucks engage customer’s experience, or unconditional stimuli, with other conditional stimuli in
addition to visual logo. For example, it may use a jingle, a tagline, or a pattern of conversation by its associates. This will
remind customers, even new customers, of Starbucks when hearing these stimuli.
Behavioral Learning Theory – Operant Conditioning:

Starbucks also implements operant conditioning (instrumental conditioning) to promotional program, My Starbucks

Reward, offered to customers. My Starbucks Rewards is the loyalty program that provide its customers exclusive
rewards, which are definitely positive reinforcement according to the theory. Customers can enjoy the rewards, including
free drinks, exclusive early access to Starbucks’ newest products, and quick and easy payment with Starbucks’ mobile
app, when purchase coffee and join the program. These rewards provide the positive experience and strengthen the
consumer behavior. Therefore, customers are more likely to keep buying Starbucks’ products and become loyalty
customers. Moreover, Starbucks uses fixed-ratio reinforcement to increase the frequency of buying its products. When
customers buy products, ranging from coffee, pastry, or tumbler, at a store, they will earn a Star. These stars add up to
earn exclusive Starbucks rewards. If customers collect 12 Stars, they can enjoy free drink. The more stars they collect,
the more rewards they earn. Once they reach the certain number of Stars, they will become Gold membership level and
enjoy more exclusive benefits such as New Year Gift. Using this gamification, customers can be motivated to continue
buying Starbucks’ product over and over again. (Please be noted that the amount of money to collect a Star and the
number of Stars to get rewards are varied in different countries.

Question 3

Pick a well-known or popular consumer product that has a copy-cat brand (e.g. cereal, soft drinks, shampoo, pasta) available next or
near it at a store. Take a photo of the products and discuss how stimulus generalization supports the strategy behind copy-cat branding

Read https://healthbeautyconsumerbehaviour.wordpress.com/2017/05/01/seeing-double-stimulus-generalization/

technique ‘stimulus generalisation‘ to condition consumers to purchase certain products. Stimulus generalisation is the reason as to
why so many copycat brands look almost identical to the leading power brands however they are sold at a much lower price to sway
consumers. This has also been evident in the cosmetics industry and with technology. Most copy cats imitate distinctive perceptual
features of the leader brand such as colour, depicted objects, and or shape of the package or the letters and sound of the brand name
(Horen and Pieters 2010). 

The Australian food and grocery council’s chief executive said today that supermarkets are targeting brands with a strong market share
and copying their designs as closely as possible without infringing trademark laws (AFN, 2011).

Question 4

Many well-established health and beauty product lines have grown through product-line extensions. Find an example of product-line
extension and describe how this relates to behavioural learning

The reactions we learn to one object tend to transfer to other, similar objects in a process
psychologists term  stimulus generalization. That explains why a drugstore’s bottle of private
brand mouthwash deliberately packaged to resemble Listerine mouthwash may evoke a
similar response among consumers, who assume that this copy-cat product shares other
characteristics of the original. Indeed, consumers in one study on shampoo brands tended to
rate those with similar packages as similar in quality and performance as well.

Stimulus generalization is the basic idea underlying numerous branding strategies that share
this approach: (1) Create a brand name that consumers learn to associate with positive
qualities; (2) paste that brand name on other, reasonably similar products; (3) stand back and
let the positive associations transfer to the new item

Product line extensions is considered as an example of success of stimulus generalization . Marketers add related products to an
established brand

Question 5

Which brands use celebrity endorsement as a means to “model” behaviour for a youth target audience? Share and discuss your
example using the concepts from the section on cognitive learning

Read https://scholarworks.waldenu.edu/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?article=1013&context=ijamt

Celebrity endorsement is an easy way to connect with consumers. Celebrities enjoy public recognition
and they can use this recognition on behalf of a product by appearing in an advertisement for the
product (McCracken, 1989). Strong celebrities can help the consumers to connect with the brand and
lead them to retail outlets to purchase the brand. Celebrities can reduce the time for consumer to
move from awareness to action

By observing continuously a person gets attracted and apes what they doing (Wes ten, D. 1999)
Audience view celebrities as very important, prestigious and unique thus this brings in the perception
of practicing what they do and identify themselves with celebrities to have an image similar to them.
This helps in finding reinforcement for personal values thus finding model behavior