‘Consumer decision-making is poor when shopping because advertising produces false memories.'

Mark scheme

Marking points from the official mark scheme (Oct/Nov 2018). The mark or mark type is shown in brackets.

1. Marks: use generic levels of response in table C.
2. Syllabus: intuitive thinking and its imperfections: advertising and false memory (Braun-LaTour et al., 2004)
3. Most likely (any other appropriate responses should be credited):
4. For:
5. ∞ Advertising experiences have the potential for malleability and manipulation; Wells: 'Advertising helps consumers interpret these experiences. It suggests what should be noticed. It provides cues and clues to help consumers understand and appreciate their feelings. And in this way it can change the nature of the response'.
6. ∞ recent research suggests that advertising received after an experience can exert an impact by influencing how that experience is remembered (Braun 1999).
7. ∞ Reconstructive memory is a reconstruction by which we give meaning to our experiences, influenced both by what we knew before and what we learned afterwards; that such related information may combine together so that when a past experience is recalled, the advertising information may infiltrate that memory.
8. ∞ Evidence from Study 1 Braun-LaTour et al., 2004: We expected that the false information would change what consumers remembered about their experience at Disney. Note: experiments 2 and 3 explore specifics of what aids/hinders the creation of false memories.
9. Against:
10. ∞ Memories, whether created falsely or not, are just one source that may influence a consumer decision, whether good or bad. For example, an item that is being offered at half price may be purchased simply because of the reduced cost.
11. ∞ Advertising may produce false memories, but are those memories 'bad' ones? A false memory may have associated a product with feeling good and a person purchases that product to help them feel good. There is a false memory but the decision-making isn't poor.