Conditioning Your Buying Habits

Many times, I have wondered what on earth the elements of a given commercial or advertisement has to do with the product itself. An example is that of the attractive, skimpily clad female singing star, whose performance over television had so raptly captured the attention of a male viewer that he didn’t notice that the restaurant in which he was working was on fire. What did this have to do with the taste or enjoyment of the product, in this case, a certain cola?

This,is an example of the effects of the association of even an unrelated pleasure to a product. The advertising agency was using the comedy form of entertainment in an effort to make the commercial entertaining as the program itself. The viewer, then, hopefully would automatically reach for that brand of cola during the next trip to the store.

Meanwhile, another brand probably sitting right beside it, plays upon natural human greed by advertising right on the container that the buyer may become a millionaire just by purchasing that can (and multiply those chances by buying a six or twelve pack).

Neither of these ploys, of course, has anything to do with the quality or quantity of the respective products themselves. But the technique of associating an otherwise unassociated pleasure with the satisfaction of the perceived need to fulfill that pleasure may in fact be more effective. In this case, the advertiser is exploiting the male’s (usually) innate attraction to females to create a humorous, therefore pleasurable, and memorable experience.

This effect is known in the world of psychology as “classical conditioning.” A very well simplified and clear explanation of classical conditioning is that it occurs when a stimulus designed to get a certain response is paired with another stimulus that, of itself, initially would not have such an effect. So over time, this second stimulus will cause a similar response because it is associated with the first one.

An example of this is an ad that ran some time ago promoting a laundry starch. The most prominent feature of the commercial was a waterfall. What did that have to do with starch? An explanation may be found a study where 79% of a group of students chose a pen of the same color of that to which they had been exposed while listening to music they enjoyed. Yet 70% of another group, who had listened to music strange to them, picked one of a different color. This is a classic example of associating a specific object with a pleasurable experience, which in turn creates a “false pleasure” to get a response, in this case buying their product.

So the next time you reach past one brand to buy the next, or ignore the generic version, which, deep down, you know may be just as good, this may help you understand just why you did that.

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