Apropiación Social del Conocimiento · 2022

Effect of the differential discount value on the purchase prediction: an approach from associative learning

Through a trial-based learning task, participants were trained to make a predictive purchase judgment by observing a cue (product) in a context (store) followed by an outcome (discount). Cue X was associated with different outcomes (partial reinforcement) during the trials (discounts of 50%, 30%, 0%), while cue Z was associated with the same result (continuous reinforcement) during the trials (discount of 30%); both cues were trained in the same context (shop A). Cue Y was associated with the absence of result (no discount) in a different context (store B). The test of the three cues X, Y, Z was performed in the context of training and in the different but familiar context to the task (stores A and B). Context change significantly reduced the judgments of the X and Z cues but showed no changes in the Y cue. The findings are discussed from the perspective of the Attentional Theory of Contextual Processing to explain that the effect of context change does occur due to the salience of the context and the ambiguity in the meaning of the cues, but its scope includes both the continuously reinforced cue and the partially reinforced cue. These results have practical implications in marketing and consumer psychology for the adoption of discount strategies that can be used in online and offline environments.