Journal of Consumer Research · 1987 · 374 citations · 13 references
Advertising ContextBehavioral Decision MakingVarious PropertiesConsumer StudyConsumer ResearchConsumer AttitudeCommunicationAttitude TheoryExperimental Decision MakingManagementExperimental EconomicsConsumer BehaviorBehavioral PrincipleConditioningConsumer ChoiceBehavioral SciencesConsumer Decision MakingExperimental PsychologyMarketingAdvertisingExperimental Analysis Of BehaviorConsumer PsychologyClassical ConditioningBehavioral EconomicsConsumer AttitudesBusinessBehavioral ExperimentsPersuasionExperiment 1
The study responds to McSweeney and Bierley’s call for advanced classical conditioning research in consumer behavior. The study aimed to examine properties of classical conditioning in advertising and consumer behavior. Four experiments were conducted, each testing different aspects of classical conditioning in an advertising context. The experiments showed that attitudes can be conditioned at multiple levels, latent inhibition slows conditioning, forward conditioning is more effective than backward, and the fourth experiment reinforced these results while mitigating earlier methodological concerns.
We conducted four experiments to test various properties of classical conditioning in an advertising/consumer behavior context. Experiment 1 demonstrates attitude conditioning at each of four levels of conditioned stimulus-unconditioned stimulus pairing. In Experiment 2, latent inhibition due to subject preexposure to the conditioned stimulus is shown to retard conditioning for both 10-trial and 1-trial pairings of conditioned and unconditioned stimuli. Experiment 3 reveals that forward conditioning of attitudes is superior to backward conditioning. Experiment 4 extends the findings from the first three experiments and serves to counter some of their potential methodological problems. Collectively, these experiments provide an initial response to McSweeney and Bierley's (1984) call for more sophisticated classical conditioning research in consumer behavior.
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