Operant Conditioning and The Way Companies Reward Their Customers

Operant Conditioning explains how consequences lead to changes in voluntary behaviour. B.F Skinner says it’s a form of learning that focuses on using either positive or negative punishment or reinforcement to change an individual’s behaviour. B.F Skinner discovered that behaviour that is reinforced tends to be repeated and that behaviour that is not reinforced tend to die out.

The picture above shows how B.F Skinner used rats on his experiment with positive and negative reinforcement. According to Skinner the rats quickly learned that by pressing the lever they get a reward or turn of the shock.

Positive Reinforcement- strengthens a behaviour by providing a consequence an individual finds rewarding. This makes it more likely that you will do it again like when the rat was getting food from pressing the Lever/ stopping the electric shocks once they pressed the lever or like when you get desert after you finish eating your veggies. An example of Positive Reinforcement: click here  

Negative Reinforcement- this strengthens behaviour because it stops or removes and unpleasant experiences.  This is the removal of a stimulus like getting no homework because you did well in class.

Punishment- this the opposite of Positive reinforcement because it makes it less likely that you will repeat it again.

Operant conditioning is everywhere in our daily lives, there aren’t many thing that we do in our lives that haven’t been influenced at some point in Operant conditioning. We even see Operant conditioning in some extraordinary situations like teaching pigeons to do some tricks by systematically rewarding them for desirable behaviour.

Operant Conditioning has been brought to the marketing place and businesses started rewarding their customers based on buying or using their brand ^{(Solomon, 2012)}. It tends to create a relationship where consumers associate the brand with rewards and they keep returning to their products.

Reinforcement:

ü  Fixed-Interval Reinforcement-  this makes individuals want to buy your product because  it maybe only scheduled or for a limited amount of time e.g. you have always wanted to go on a holiday but you could never afford it but let’s say Secret Escape Holiday Offers   these are just for a limited amount of time so you are forced to get them or wait till next year. (Sales / Special Offers)

ü  Variable Interval Reinforcement-  this is when the reinforce should provide motivation for the behaviour to be repeated like having Secret shoppers keep standards high or having work reviews every months to get feedback based on your performance that month.

ü  Fixed-Ratio Reinforcement- is a schedule of reinforcement where a response is reinforced only after a specified number of responses. E.g. various companies in the tourism Industry have many ways of rewarding their loyal customers. British airways have a rewards system which ranges from the Blue exclusive club, Bronze, Silver and Gold membership. Each time a customer flies with them they get a chance to add points each of their exclusive clubs have different benefits for the consumer. Consumers get attracted to such schemes it’s a good way to draw customers in. (Loyalty cards, bonus points etc.)

ü  Variable-Ratio Reinforcement- is a schedule of reinforcement wherein a reinforcer is provided following a pre-determined average number of responses Example  . (Probability of Reward – Gambling, betting, risk). In conclusion this is a good marketing scheme for companies lastly it is a good way to enforce customer loyalty.