Conditioning: Punishment

We now have the last blog of our mini series on conditioning! If you have not read my blogs on classical conditioning and reinforcement in operant conditioning, please go catch up before reading this.

Without further ado, we will now talk about the final part of operant conditioning: punishment. This is one that had the most limited application to marketing, however is nonetheless interesting to understand.

As we discussed before, operant conditioning is learning through reinforcement. When a behaviour is rewarded, a certain behaviour is reinforced and more likely to be repeated in the future. Punishment is a different type of reinforcement, where by punishing a behaviour we decreased the likelihood of it's repetition. As with reinforcement, punishment can be split into positive or negative punishment. Positive punishment is when a punishment is added as a result of a bad behaviour, however negative punishment is taking away something desirable when an undesired behaviour is performed.

Now, marketing. Positive punishment most appears in the business world in the form of fees. By adding the punishment of fees for undesired behaviours, the person/customer is less likely to repeat them in the future.

Negative punishment is slightly more common, finding that it often links to positive reinforcement (catch up here). If a customer is rewards with points, or loyalty stamps etc, it is likely that these will have an expiration date. Therefore is the customer does not return to the business, or stops being a regular customer, they are likely to lose their benefits. As such, they are incentivised to return.

Punishment seems like a confusing concept to include in your marketing and business, but I hope this blog has helped. We have reached the end of your exploration of conditioning and you are now equipped to apply it and see the benefits grow.

-- From Marketing to Mind --