Proceedings of the Annual Meeting of the Cognitive Science Society

Rational accounts of decision-making are incompatible withthe prevalence and success of ubiquitous marketing strategies.In this paper, we demonstrate, using computational experi-ments, how an ideal Bayesian observer model of preferencelearning is compatible with the manipulation of purchasingdecisions via a number of well-known marketing techniques.The ability of this model to predict the effects of both famil-iar and novel marketing interventions suggests it as a plausiblecandidate theory of consumer marketing. Simultaneously, byclarifying the logic underneath the interplay between environ-mental exposure and preference distortions seen in economicdecisions, this model rationalizes the seemingly irrational sus-ceptibility of consumers to marketing.