Pierre Schifflers explores in his blog how marketers may use classical conditoning through music and making consumers more likely to buy their products.
This is the link to the blog:
I agree with Pierre and his analysis, however I want to build-on the role that classical conditioning plays in consumers’ decision making. Classical conditioning is a theory of how we learn new things. In the marketing context this can be applied to how we learn and remember the products or brands, and how which of these products or brands go into the consumers’ evoked set.
Imagine a consumer buys a tooth brush of a brand he has never used before. When he uses the tooth brush and find the experience satisfying he would relate that satisfying experience to that particular brand. The next time that this customer see that particular brand, through classical conditional, he would have a positive feeling and hence will be likely to make the purchase from that brand. This means that he would be more likely to buy different products from that particular brand than any other brand, in other words, the brand is in his evoked set.
Ofcourse, classical conditioning also works the other way if the product gave the consumer an adverse feeling. Therefore companies must keep this in mind when designing the product; they want consumers to associate the positive feelings with their brand and not vice versa. This is basically why a brand like Nike want to associate themselves with superstar like Roger Federer. When people think of Roger Federer, they think of professionalism, superior skills, and victory. This is what Nike want people to think when they see the famous ‘swoosh’ logo.
