Consumer Behavior Flashcards

Flashcards covering key vocabulary and concepts from consumer behavior lectures.

Consumer Behavior

The totality of consumers’ thoughts, feelings, and decisions about the acquisition, consumption, and disposition of goods, services, activities, and ideas.

Applied Research

Research that answers questions specific to a given product, market, etc. Conducted in-house, by external research firms, or watchdog agencies.

Basic Research

Research that answers questions independent of product specifics. Conducted in universities, government agencies, and "Think-Tanks".

Observation (Research Method)

Watching how people interact with some aspect of their environment. Often used to form hypotheses for later testing.

Experiments

A research method that allow investigators to test for causation.

Independent Variable (IV)

The variable that is manipulated; hypothesized to be the cause of a particular outcome.

Dependent Variable (DV)

The variable that is measured; hypothesized to be affected by manipulation of the independent variable.

Random Assignment

Assigning participants in experimental research to different groups randomly, so they are as likely to be assigned to one condition as to another.

Reliability (in research)

The degree to which the particular way researchers measure a given variable is likely to yield consistent results.

External Validity

An indication of how well the results of a study generalize to contexts besides those of the study itself.

Internal Validity

In experimental research, confidence that only the manipulated variable could have produced the results.

Guerrilla Marketing

An advertising approach that uses surprise to communicate with the target market.

Exposure

Occurs when a stimulus comes within range of someone’s sensory receptors.

Mere Exposure Effect

Repeated exposure to a stimulus leads to increased liking and preference, even if subconscious.

Perceptual Fluency

Stimuli are easier to process if they have been processed before.

Absolute Threshold

The lowest intensity of a stimulus that can be perceived via a sensory channel; the minimum level of stimuli needed to experience sensation.

Subliminal Advertising

Subtle messages included in advertising campaigns designed to provoke a subconscious reaction in viewers.

Differential Threshold

The amount by which two stimuli must differ before a person can perceive that they are different; also called Just Noticeable Difference (JND).

Weber's Law

The ability to sense change in a stimulus depends on the strength of the original stimulus.

Attention

The process by which we devote mental activity to a stimulus necessary for information to be processed and to activate our senses.

Zeigarnik Effect

A psychological phenomenon related to incomplete stimuli; involves creating an unfinished or interrupted task that draws attention.

Interpretation

The meaning that we assign to sensory stimuli.

Schema

A set of associations linked to a concept or category.

Sensory Marketing

Marketing that engages the consumers’ senses and affects their perception, judgement, and behavior.

Learning

The process of acquiring new information and knowledge about products and services for applications to future behavior.

Memory

Enables past experiences and learning to influence current behavior.

Classical Conditioning

Creating associations between meaningful objects or ideas to elicit desired response.

Stimulus Generalization

Tendency for stimuli similar to a conditioned stimulus to evoke similar, unconditioned responses.

Operant Conditioning (Instrumental Conditioning)

The individual learns to perform behaviors that produce positive outcomes and to avoid those that yield negative outcomes; learning through consequences.

Positive Reinforcement

Providing something positive

Negative Reinforcement

Removal of something negative

Shaping

Reinforcing successive approximations of the desired response.

Sensory Memory

Holds information from the sensory registers until it can be processed further. Information is stored automatically and retained only briefly.

Short-Term Memory (Working Memory)

Encodes or interprets incoming information and keep it available for further processing: used in response; stored more permanently; lost. Stores information for a limited period of time and has limited capacity

Chunking

Grouping items that can be processed as a unit.

Rehearsal

Actively and consciously interacting with the material.

Elaboration

Processing at deeper levels of meaning; more enduring memory is established when we think about information and consciously relate it to existing information and past experience.

Long-Term Memory

Holds information more permanently after it has been transferred from STM. Has potentially unlimited capacity.

Spreading Activation

The process by which retrieving one concept spreads to the retrieval of a related concept.

Priming

Activating a node in memory. A primed, or activated, node may then activate other nodes and may trigger associated behaviors.

Retrieval Cues

Help pull information from LTM into STM. Retrieval is better when the context of retrieval matches the context of encoding.

Decay

Trace strength over time. Memory failure.

Retroactive Interference

Consumers may forget stimulus-response associations if they learn new responses to the same or similar stimuli.

Proactive Interference

Old knowledge interferes with the ability to learn something new.

Illusion of Truth Effect

The tendency to believe false information to be correct after repeated exposure.

Sleeper Effect

A psychological phenomenon where a message has a delayed impact on an individual’s attitudes or beliefs because they forget the source of the message.

Habits

Repetitive behaviors that are relatively uninfluenced by current intentions, goals, and attitudes, and instead cued by the environment.

Attitude

A lasting, general evaluation of people, objects, advertisements, or issues.

Theory of Cognitive Dissonance

When consumers realize inconsistencies between attitude & behavior, they experience dissonance (aversive psychological tension) and feel the pressure to reduce or remove it.

Balance Theory

Consider how a person might perceive relations among different attitude objects and how they might alter attitudes to maintain consistency.

Elaboration Likelihood Model

Two routes to persuasion, depending on recipient’s current state of mind: central and peripheral route.

Source Credibility

Impacts the likelihood the message will be accepted. Characteristics include: expertise, trustworthiness, objectivity.

Persuasion

An active attempt to change attitudes.

Involvement

A person’s perceived relevance of the object based on their inherent needs, values, and interests.

Problem Recognition

Occurs when a consumer sees a difference between current state and ideal state.