CB: Session 8D : Cognitive Learning

Not always consumers learn through associations or as a result of repeated trails. Human mind has problem solving ability. Cognitive theory analyses this mental processing that goes through consumers' mind during buying decision making. 

Information Processing

Human mind process information that its receives through interaction with outside world. The consumers differs in their cognitive ability. More experience result in greater familiarity towards a brand as consumers learn about the brand. A consumer with high cognitive learning will seek more information about the product. Take the example of a young executive who is planning to buy a car. He would look for more and more information about the various attributes that may serve his needs.  He would come across several point of decisions - what segment to look at? whether to go for diesel or petrol variant? What is more important style, economy or reliability? This will make him compare many brands at every stage.He may also go test drives. As he gain familiarity towards cars his ability to learn about cars increases. 

In this process, human memory acts as CPU, where all the information is stored and retrieved. The 'store houses' keeps the information temporarily before further processing are sensory store, short-term store and long term store.

An image or sound will last for just a few minutes and then be forgotten in the sensory store. The sensory store will receive the imagery in the subconscious mind. If the consumers receives the information repeatedly (rehearsal) it goes for further processing. The short-term store is the stage where information is processed.  Similarly to the sensory store, it is just held for a brief time.  Information that is consistent will the consumers belief and need set will move, through encoding, to the long-term store.  Long-term store keeps the information here can last for relatively extended periods of time (retention). Retention, though not shown on this process chart, describes what happens with the information in long-term storage.  As it is retained, it is constantly organized and reorganized.  Finally, retrieval, the last stage of the process, describes how consumers recover information.  Situational cues are the most common reason to retrieve information. For example, any discount or sales promotion scheme may help in a brand retrieval. 

Cognitive Learning Process

Since consumer behaviour typically involves choices and decision making, the cognitive perspective has particular appeal to marketers, specially for very high involvement products.  The cognitive learning process is highly driven by need or goal. Once that need is fulfilled consumers look for new learning for the fulfillment of new needs and goals.

To conclude, how learning occurs highly depends of product category, perception of people and the marketers efforts and integration of several factors.

Desire to learn more as learning never exhausts human mind. Happy Reading!

References: Consumer Behaviour by Schiffman, Kaunk and Kumar