Learning and Memory in Marketing

Introduction

In the years leading up to the advent of social media outreach, marketing had developed its substantial
focus on consumer psychology to get the best benefits of the human psyche and to get into the
subconscious of the buyer through creative use of advertising and marketing. The old days of direct
advertising completely behind, the companies now use well formulated strategies to market their products
to consumers who are taken to be already oversaturated with marketing. (Rossi and Krey, 2017)

Oversaturation of marketing leads consumers to look for different sorts of products. Some, that would not
even look like they are marketing. This has led to an increase in the use of social media platforms,
interactive and engaging forms of marketing, along with subtler strategies for visibility and memorability
of a brand in the modern world where standing out from the crop and being remembered has become one
of the prime goals of marketing strategies. (Dimitriu and Guesalaga, 2017; Rossi and Krey, 2017)

The goals thus outlined are to be achieved using many new methods that derive from the field of
consumer psychology and outline the needs of what is to be marketed and how to market the given
products.(Dimitriu and Guesalaga, 2017) Strategizing for a community permeation through brand name
and a brand story has become an important factor in marketing.

In this vein, we can study one of the more successful groups that have rebranded and expanded their
brand many times in the past decades and have been on with the changing times to permeate their brand
name and have a reach in a wide variety of markets and services.

Through Coles, the study aims to see how the strategies of learning and memory and their own latent
theories can help marketing and how far it has helped the company. There will also be a scope for
appraisal of the strategies already used by the Coles and how they can also do it better.
Coles Group

Coles Group is a retailer that has more than 2500 retail stores across Australia. It has permeated into
many markets. Apart from retail and online retail they also have their own financial services, hotel chain,
loyalty programmes and liquor chains. They claim to serve 21 million people in some capacity everyday
through a wide variety of their services. (About us | Coles Group, no date)

Coles Group was started in 1914 as a variety store where ‘the customers decided what would be in the
store’. From those beginnings the company had been able to expand into multiple retail shops and then
onto the supermarket domain by the 1950s, from there on substantially expanding into various domains of
businesses making their in house lines of products available and developing an online retail facility for
their chain of products.
Coles Group’s Marketing Strategy Development

The strategy employed by the group can thus be seen as gaining competitive advantage in various
domains that the company enters.

The group had a recent dip before the 2008 recession hit the markets but since then has come out strong
by using some of the strategies outlined in a paper by A Kalatunga where it is argued that the group had
allowed the competitive advantage they had gained to slip away. This had been due to the failed
articulation of the strategies that could have been differentiated. It is seen that the company had been
employing itself into many markets but had not been able to look beyond the bounds of the company and
to extend its chain to suppliers. (Kulatunga, no date)

This study came out in the time when the market was close to decentralization and retailers and super
market businesses were employing innovative techniques to decentralize their focus and ease the
company grip over products instead adopting a more permissive and more expansive strategy based on
indirectly persuasive marketing and social influence.
Implementation of Theories of Learning and Memory in Marketing.

The appraisal of theories of learning and memory are thus seen in terms of their use in the marketing
strategies of the Coles through their social media presence, website and local marketing and advertising.

Learning theories:

Learning is based around, in the classical sense of the study, broadly three characteristic conditionings.

1. Classical Conditioning:
Classical conditioning plays a role in consumer behaviour in the sense that Unconditioned stimulus
projects an unconditional response which is then added to a conditioned stimuli which is then associated.
This can be seen in use by the Coles in their front advertising, website and social media where the use of
faces takes precedence.(Pornpitakpan, 2012) The image developed by this stimulus is that the company is
welcoming and cares about people. It also involves active use of personal stories and individual content to
get through this goal to make it desirable.(Ensslin, 2017)

2. Operant conditioning:
Three major forms of operant learning exist. Use of Positive reinforcement is well documented and well
studied across marketing and used in the context of the Coles. There is limited scope of things that are
possible for negative reinforcements and punishment in use of marketing.

The use of positive reinforcement in the Coles Group is their expansive loyalty programme which
provides various benefits for the people who are repeat buyers and are regularly using products. It is also
in their discount factors and their consumer cards wherein there is a preferential treatment marketed for
customers. (Flynn and Goldsmith, 2016)

Use of negative reinforcement can be more persuasive in certain contexts however. One can dissuade
cancellation of memberships by a simple warning text and a last persuasive message telling the person the
disadvantages of their actions. Such actions keep the choice with the customer but allow the seller to
retain their marketing influence.(Raab, Jason Goddard and Unger, 2016)

3. Vicarious learning:
In terms of local markets, the influence of vicarious learning cannot be overstated. It is when people learn
through the experiences of others. To brand a company in terms of its consumer service and their good
hospitality and a considerable human quotient has always been paramount but ever the more important
now. As seen here, the media presence of the Coles and their interactive strategies of marketing even in
automated facilities of their stores allow them slight edges in Vicarious learning. However, as with many
supermarkets, the expansion may often come at a compromise of quality which is a bad sign in terms of
influence.
Memory related theories:

Memory duration: Advertising through sensory models like ads and banners usually retain very short time
in the mind of the reader and sometimes are not noticed until they are seeing it repeatedly. Instead, TV
ads, mail orders and other more lasting techniques are more helpful. Coles cannot have a TV marketing
campaign as extensively. Instead their use of their youtube channel to provide engaging content has been
good for their marketing in long term content based advertising.

Making information memorable: Various uses of Chunking, and use of good Ads in terms of content
marketing can help information be retained better. (Raab, Jason Goddard and Unger, 2016; Kistler and
Ashley Kistler, 2017) This is severely lacking in some forms of the website where the names of the
services are bare bones and not serviceable enough to give impressions. The language used may need a
help of copywriting to make it more market friendly and less corporate-sounding.

Spreading activation: for a service that offers a wide range of services it is important to synergize their
various brands so as to trigger the memory of one through the other. This can be seen as lacking in the
strategies of the company as it often employs singular marketing and has not been able to harness all the
side companies into one big lifestyle campaign.(Winterich, Reczek and Irwin, 2017)

Salience and prototypicality: the company has to strive towards making their chains look ‘better than the
competition. To make the memory of the person of the brand as a prototype for certain kinds of services.
This is the way through which it can monopolize its products.

Priming and Scripts: Script refers to remembering how to do things. The interface of the Coles Group’s
online presence is easy to guide through and provide enough information for offline retail to be a good
example of this. In priming , the strategy is ato associate the product with an experience which can be
done better with a personal experience marketing campaign.

Positioning: This has become the most important aspect of brand marketing in recent years. All big
brands have carved out a niche in marketing to provide a single coherent image of what their company
does and why it is better than the competition at doing it. (Alexius and Löwenberg, 2018)While the Coles
Group is working towards it, there is still a need for a coherent image of what it is exactly that Coles
promotes that is consistent with its services.
Conclusion

The marketing strategy of Coles has been to proport itself as consumer friendly and a caring brand that is
able to take care of a variety of needs of people and is ready to serve them in their lifestyle needs and
betterment through their content marketing strategies through magazines, blogs and youtube. However,
there is a lack of coherence as is demonstrated in their use of appraisals of memory strategies and use of
wrong forms of ad languages that may hamper the overall effect of their marketing campaign. There is a
need to define the positioning of the company to remember it apart from the competition as an entity and
not merely as a market.
References

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