Chapter 3. Perception: Mkt201 - Consumer Behavior
Chapter 3. Perception: Mkt201 - Consumer Behavior
Perception
MKT201 - CONSUMER BEHAVIOR
Chapter Objectives
1. Products and commercial messages often appeal to our senses, but
because of the profusion of these messages we don’t notice most
of them.
2. Perception is a three-stage process that translates raw stimuli into
meaning.
3. The field of semiotics helps us to understand how marketers use
symbols to create meaning.
You are here!
Sensation
Sensation refers to the immediate response of our sensory
receptors (eyes, ears, nose, mouth, fingers, skin) to basic stimuli
such as light, color, sound, odor, and texture.
Perception is the process by which people select, organize, and
interpret these sensations.
Sensory Marketing
Companies think carefully about the impact of sensations on our
product experiences.
Sensation Transference
Vision
• As humans, we rely on our sense of vision more
than any of our other four sense (Calvert and
Pathak, 2016). This is why marketers strongly
focus on developing visually stimulating elements
that appeal to their target audience.
• Marketers adopt an array of visual elements in
advertising to influence consumer perception.
These include colour, sizes, shapes, styles, space
and more; of these elements, colour is probably
one of the most impactful in terms of influencing
consumer perception.
Vision
Vision
Dollars and Scents
• Like color, odor can also stir emotions and memory.
• Scent Marketing is a form of sensory marketing that we may see in
lingerie, detergents, and more.
Sound
• Audio watermarking
• Sound symbolism
• Phenomes
Music Marketing
Sound explanation
Touch
Research has found that touching a product can affect
consumer attitudes and increase purchase intention
towards the product.
Kids Reaction
The Stages of Perception
We receive external
stimuli through
our five senses
Stage 1: Key Concepts in Exposure
• Absolute threshold is the minimum amount of stimulation a person can
detect on a given sensory channel.
• Differential threshold refers to the ability of a sensory system to detect
changes in or differences between two stimuli
• Just Noticeable Difference (JND) refers to the minimum difference we
can detect between two stimuli
• Weber’s Law – the ability of the consumer to detect changes in the
stimulus intensity is strongly related to the intensity of the original
stimulus.
Marketing Application of the J.N.D
Stage 2: Attention
• Attention is the extent to which processing activity is devoted to a
particular stimulus
• Consumers experience sensory overload
• Marketers need to break through the clutter
RedMi
Stage 3: Interpretation
Interpretation refers to the meaning we assign to sensory stimuli,
which is based on a schema.
Schema: set of beliefs, to which we assign it.
Individuals can view the same stimuli and have entirely different
interpretations of what it means.
What do you
think about
each person?
Interpretational Biases: The Eye of the
Beholder
• Closure Principle: people perceive an incomplete picture as
complete
• Similarity Principle: consumers group together objects that share
similar physical characteristics
• Figure-ground Principle: one part of the stimulus will dominate
(the figure) while the other parts recede into the background
(ground)
Closure Principle
What do you see?
Further reading:
• TED Talk - How brands hijack your feelings to influence what you buy
| Cindy Sheldan | TEDxBearCreekPark.
Link: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mjulylDXGZg
• Apple “Think Different Campaign”
Link: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iGQcKWODDT4