Introduction to Affect and Cognition Copyright © 2005 by The McGraw-Hill Companies, Inc. All rights reserved. McGraw-Hill/Irwin Chapter 3.

Introduction to Affect and Cognition

Copyright © 2005 by The McGraw-Hill Companies, Inc. All rights reserved. McGraw-Hill/Irwin

Chapter 3

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Components of the Wheel of Consumer Analysis

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• Environmental factors

• Behavioral influences

• Marketing strategies and stimuli

Components of the Wheel of Consumer Analysis

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Affect and Cognition as Psychological Responses

• Two types of mental responses to stimuli and events in the consumer environment– Affect

• Feeling responses

– Cognition• Mental responses

• Types or levels of affective responses– The types of affect differ in the level of bodily

arousal or intensity with which they are experienced

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Affect and Cognition as Psychological Responses cont.

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Affect and Cognition as Psychological Responses cont.

• The affective system– Five basic characteristics of the affective

system• The system is reactive• Lack of direct control over affective responses• Affective responses are felt physically in the body• The system can respond to virtually any type of

stimulus• Most affective responses are learned

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Affect and Cognition as Psychological Responses cont.

• What is cognition?– Understanding– Evaluating– Planning– Deciding– Thinking

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Affect and Cognition as Psychological Responses cont.

– Major function of people’s cognitive system is to interpret, make sense of, and understand significant aspects of their personal experiences

– Second function of cognitive system is to process interpretations or meanings in carrying out cognitive tasks

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Affect and Cognition as Psychological Responses cont.

• Relationship between affect and cognition– Differing views among researchers

• Affective and cognitive systems are independent• Affect is largely influenced by the cognitive system• Affect is the dominant system• Affective and cognitive systems are highly

interdependent

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Affect and Cognition as Psychological Responses cont.

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Affect and Cognition as Psychological Responses cont.

– Each system can respond independently to aspects of the environment

– Each system can respond to the output of the other system

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Affect and Cognition as Psychological Responses cont.

• Marketing implications– Both affect and cognition are important for

understanding consumer behavior– Affective responses are especially important for

so-called feeling products

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Affect and Cognition as Psychological Responses cont.

• Using metaphors to communicate affective and cognitive meaning– Metaphors can communicate both cognitive and

affective meanings about a brand or company

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Cognitive Processes in Consumer Decision Making

• Information-processing models– Used to identify sequence of cognitive

processes– Consumer decision making involves three

important cognitive processes• Interpretation• Integration• Retrieval of product knowledge from memory

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Cognitive Processes in Consumer Decision Making cont.

• Consumer decision making model

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Cognitive Processes in Consumer Decision Making cont.

– Interpretation processes• Attention• Comprehension• Knowledge, meanings, and beliefs

– Integration processes• How consumers combine different types of

knowledge to form overall evaluations of products, other objects, and behaviors

• Choose among alternative behaviors

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Cognitive Processes in Consumer Decision Making cont.

– Product knowledge and involvement• Stored knowledge, meanings, and beliefs• Product involvement

• Additional characteristics of the cognitive system– Activation of memory– Unconscious thinking– Spreading activation

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Cognitive Processes in Consumer Decision Making cont.

– Limited capacity– Automatic processing

• Marketing implications– Need to understand how consumers interpret

marketing strategies– Consumer integration processes critical– Activation of product knowledge

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Knowledge Stored in Memory• Types of knowledge

– General knowledge of environment and behaviors

• Propositions• Episodic knowledge• Symantic knowledge

– Procedural knowledge about how to do things• “If…then…” proposition

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Knowledge Stored in Memory cont.• Structures of knowledge

– Associative networks

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Knowledge Stored in Memory cont.– Types of knowledge structures

• Schemas• Scripts

– Marketing implications

• Cognitive learning– Direct personal use experience– Vicarious product experiences– Interpret product-related information

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Knowledge Stored in Memory cont.– Results of information interpretation

• Accretion• Tuning• Restructuring• Marketing implications

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Summary• Important internal factors of affect and

cognition and the affective and cognitive systems were introduced

• Identified four types of affective responses ranging from emotions to specific feelings to moods to evaluations

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Summary cont.• Described the cognitive system and the

various types of meanings it constructs

• Emphasized that the two systems are highly interrelated and the respective outputs of each can elicit responses from the other

• Presented a model of the cognitive process involved in consumer decision making

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Summary cont.• Discussed the content and organization of

knowledge as associate networks or knowledge structures

• Described how meaning concepts are linked together to form propositions and productions that represent general knowledge and procedural knowledge

• Two types of knowledge structures were described