Marketing Information Process on Children

Introduction

Goethe, an academician and German philosopher, once said, “We see only what we know”. This statement basically means that the perception that is formed when we see an object or receive information depends on the knowledge that is stored in our brains about the object or information. Memory lets us remember what we see, hear, and feel through perception. It can be said that memory depends on perceptions or experiences that are stored in our brains.

Memory is not just the ability to store experiences, but it also includes the ability to receive, save, and recover what is experienced (Waltigo, 1994). The ability to receive, store, and elicit again is known by the term “encoding” (coding what is perceived), “storage” (saving), and “retrieval” (recovering what has been previously experienced). Although adults’ and children’s brain development is different, there are similarities in memory processing inside the brain.

Figure 1.

Information processing stage

Source: Baron (1989).

Encoding Process

Encoding is a process to change the characteristic of a piece of information into an appropriate form according to human memory characteristics. This process greatly influences how long a piece of information is stored inside memory. This process can occur in two ways, which are:

• 1.

  Unintentionally: Which is, whenever things that are received by the senses are unintentionally placed inside the memory. For instance, children generally save their experiences unintentionally when they want something while having a temper tantrum, or cry uncontrollably while rolling around on the ground. Then they will get what they want.

• 2.

  Intentionally: Which is whenever an individual purposely keeps experiences and knowledge inside one’s memory. For example, when an individual goes to school, the person will intentionally save the knowledge in one’s brain memory.

Based on several kinds of research, it seems there are differences in one individual’s ability with another individual’s ability in saving information that he/she receives inside the memory.

Storage Process

This process is also known as retention, which is the process of storing information that is received inside a certain place. This storage also covers categorizing information, so that the place where information is stored matches with its category. Information storage is an important mechanism in memory. This storage system greatly influences the kind of memory system that will be used by an individual.

Every information receiving process will leave traces in an individual. These traces will be temporarily saved in the memory and can be retrieved later. These are called memory traces. Although these memory traces facilitate an individual to remember what has been learned, not all memory traces will be stored well, so that those memory traces can be lost and the individual can experience forgetfulness.

Related with the problem of retention and forgetfulness, there is one important thing that can be mentioned, which is regarding the interval or distance between input and retrieval. Schematically, it is depicted in Figure 2.

Figure 2.

The encoding, storage (interval), and retrieval (remember) process scheme

Intervals in the storage process can be differentiated as interval time and interval content.