Chapter 1:

BUYING, HAVING, and BEING

I. Consumer Behavior: People in the Marketplace
A. The average consumer can be classified and characterized based on
demographics (e.g. age, gender, income, occupation) and psychographics
(lifestyle and personality). The average consumer’s purchase decisions are
heavily influenced by the opinions and behaviors of their family, peers, and
acquaintances.
B. Community heavily influences us.
1. The growth of the Web has created thousands of online consumption
communities
where members share opinions and product recommendations.
2. As members of a large society, U.S. consumers share certain cultural
values or strongly held beliefs about the way the world should be
structured.
3. Subcultures, or smaller groups within the culture, also share values (e.g.
Hispanics, teens, Midwesterners).
4. The use of market segmentation strategies may be used to target a brand
to only specific groups of consumers rather than to everybody.
C. Brands often have clearly defined images or “personalities” created by product
advertising, packaging, branding, and other marketing strategies that focus on
positioning a product in a certain way.
D. When a product succeeds in satisfying a consumer’s specific needs or desires it
may be rewarded with many years of brand loyalty, a bond between product and
consumer that is difficult for competitors to break.
II. What Is Consumer Behavior?
Consumer behavior is the study of the processes involved when individuals or
groups select, purchase, use, or dispose of products, services, ideas, or experiences to
satisfy needs and desires.
A. Consumer behavior is a process.
1. Most marketers recognize that consumer behavior is an ongoing process, not
merely what happens at the moment a consumer hands over money or a
credit card and in turn receives some good or service (buyer behavior).
2. The exchange—a transaction where two or more organizations or people give
and receive something of value—is an integral part of marketing. However,
the expanded view of consumer behavior emphasizes the entire consumption
process. This view includes issues that influence the consumer before, during,
and after a purchase.
B. Consumer behavior involves many different actors.
1. A consumer is a person who identifies a need or desire, makes a purchase,
and then disposes of the product during the three stages in the consumption
process.

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 2. The purchaser and user of a product might not be the same person. A separate
person might be an influencer. This person provides recommendations for or
against certain products without actually buying or using them.
3. Consumers may be organizations or groups (in which one person may
make the decision for the group or a large group of people may make
purchase decisions).
III. Consumers’ Impact on Marketing Strategy
A. Understanding consumer behavior is good business.
1. Marketers can only satisfy consumer needs to the extent that they
understand the people or organizations that will use the products and
services they sell.
2. Consumer response is the ultimate test of whether a marketing strategy will
succeed.
3. Data about consumers help organizations define the market, identify
threats to and opportunities for a brand, and help ensure a product
continues to appeal to its core market.
B. Consumers Are Different! How We Divide Them Up
1. Society is evolving from a mass culture to a diverse one, which makes it
more important to identify diverse market segments and to develop
specialized messages and products for those groups.
a. Just think about how many shades of lipstick or neck tie
patterns compete for attention. This change makes it more
important than ever to identify these distinct markets.

2. The process of market segmentation identifies groups of consumers who are

similar to one another in one or more ways and then devises strategies that
appeal to one or more groups. There are many ways to segment a market.
a. Companies can define market segments by identifying their most
loyal, core customers or heavy users. Marketers use the 80/20 rule
as a rule of thumb, where 20% of users account for 80% of sales.
b. Demographics are statistics that measure observable aspects of a
population, such as birth rate, age distribution, and income.
3. Important demographic dimensions include:
a. Age
b. Gender
c. Family structure
d. Social class and income
e. Race and ethnicity
C. Geography and Lifestyles (a psychographic variable) are other important bases
for segmenting consumers.Relationship and Database Marketing
1. Relationship marketing occurs when a company makes an effort to
interact with customers on a regular basis, giving customers reasons to
maintain a bond with the company over time.
2. Database marketing involves tracking consumers’ buying habits very
closely and creating products and messages tailored precisely to people’s
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 wants and needs based on this information.
IV. Marketing’s Impact on Consumers
A. Popular Culture
1. Popular culture consists of the music, movies, sports, books, celebrities,
and other forms of entertainment consumed by the mass market; it is both a
product of and an inspiration for marketers.
2. Product icons (e.g. Pillsbury Doughboy, Jolly Green Giant) often become
central figures in popular culture.
B. What Does It Mean to Consume?
1. A fundamental premise of consumer behavior is that people often buy
products not for what they do, but for what they mean.
2. People, in general, will choose the brand that has an image (or even a
personality) that is consistent with his or her underlying needs.
3. Role theory takes the view that much of consumer behavior resembles
actions in a play. Consumers have roles and they may alter their
consumption decisions depending upon the role being played
4. People may have various relationships with a product:
a. Self-concept attachment—the product helps to establish the user’s identity.
b. Nostalgic attachment—the product serves as a link with a past self.
c. Interdependence—the product is a part of the user’s daily routine.
d. Love—the product elicits emotional bonds of warmth, passion, or other
strong emotion.
C. What Do We Need – Really?
1. A want is a specific manifestation of a need that personal and cultural
factors determine.
2. A utilitarian need emphasizes objective, tangible attributes of products.
Hedonic needs are subjective and experiential.
3. A productivity orientation refers to a continual striving to use time
constructively.
D. How We Classify Consumer Needs
1. Henry Murray developed a set of 20 psychogenic needs that result in
specific behaviors.
2. Some important needs for understanding consumer behavior are listed below:
a. Need for affiliation
b. Need for power
c. Need for uniqueness
3. Maslow’s hierarchy of needs implies that the order of development of needs
is fixed. Figure 1.2 presents this model. The needs include physiological,
safety, social, esteem, and self-actualization.
E. The Global “Always On” Consumer
1. A global consumer culture is one where people around the world are united
by their common devotion to brand name consumer goods, movie stars, and
musical celebrities.

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 2. When companies expand overseas, it increases the pressure to
understand how customers in other countries are the same or different
from those in one’s own country.
F. The Digital Native: Living a Social [Media] Life
1. The digital revolution is one of the most significant influences on consumer
behavior.
2. Electronic marketing has increased convenience by breaking down barriers
of time and location.
3. There is now B2C e-commerce (businesses selling to consumers) and
C2C e- commerce (consumers selling to consumers).
4. Virtual brand communities are often brought together by their interests,
which expand consumption communities beyond those available in local
communities.
5. Digital natives are consumers who grew up “wired” in a highly networked,
always- on world where digital technology always existed.
6. Consumers are part of a horizontal revolution, where each consumer can
communicate with huge numbers of people by a click on a keypad so
information flows across people instead of just coming from big
companies and governments.
7. Social media are the online means of communication, conveyance,
collaboration and cultivation among interconnected and interdependent
networks of people, communities and organizations enhanced by
technological capabilities and mobility
8. User-generated content, where everyday people film commercials, voice their
opinions about products, brands and companies on blogs, podcasts and social
networking sites, is part of the Web 2.0 era, which shifted the Internet from a
one- way transmission medium to a social, interactive medium Social media is
characterized by synchronous (real-time) and asynchronous
interactions across social media platforms that enable a culture of
participation.
V. Consumer Behavior as a Field of Study
A. Where Do We Find Consumer Researchers? Just about anywhere, we find
consumers.
B. Interdisciplinary Influences on the Study of Consumer Behavior – Many fields
shape the field of consumer behavior. Table 1.1 provides an example of
interdisciplinary research issues about magazine usage. Figure 1.3 lists the
disciplines in consumer research.
C. Should Consumer Research Have an Academic or an Applied Focus?
It is still a debate. Some argue in favor of an applied focus that improves the
effectiveness of marketing practice. Others argue for a focus on understanding
consumption for its own sake.
D. Two Perspectives on Consumer Research
1. One general way to classify consumer research is in terms of the fundamental
assumptions the researchers make about what they are studying and how to
study it. This set of beliefs is known as a paradigm. A paradigm shift may
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 now be underway.
2. The dominant paradigm currently is called positivism (or sometimes called
modernism). It emphasizes that human reason is supreme, and that there is a
single, objective truth that can be discovered by science. Positivism
encourages us to stress the function of objects, to celebrate technology, and to
regard the world as a rational, ordered place with a clearly defined past,
present, and future.
3. The emerging paradigm of interpretivism (or postmodernism) questions the
previous assumptions. Proponents argue that there is too much emphasis on
science and technology in our society, and that this ordered, rational view of
consumers denies the complex social and cultural world in which we live.
Others say positivism puts too much emphasis on material well-being, and
that this logical outlook is dominated by an ideology that stresses the
homogeneous views of a culture dominated by white males.
4. Interpretivists instead stress the importance of symbolic, subjective
experience and the idea that meaning is in the mind of the person because we
live a world composed of a pastiche, or mixture of images.

Chapter 2:
CONSUMER AND SOCIAL WELL-BEING
I. Business Ethics and Consumer Rights
A. Business ethics are rules of conduct that guide actions in the marketplace—the
standards against which most people in a culture judge what is right and what is
wrong, good, or bad.
1. There are various universal values and many culture-specific ones (which
influence whether business practices like bribery are acceptable).
2. Some marketers violate consumer trust (using illegal mislabels on packages
or using bait-and-switch selling).
3. Some marketers engage in practices that are legal but have detrimental
effects on society.
B. Needs and Wants: Do Marketers Manipulate Consumers?
1. Consumer space is an environment where individuals dictate to companies
the types of products they want and how, when, and where, or even if, they
want to learn about them (a shift from marketer space where companies
called the shots).
2. Do marketers create artificial needs? There are arguments to support both sides
of this question.
a. A need is a basic biological motive; a want represents one way that
society has taught us to satisfy that need.
b. A basic objective of marketing is to create awareness that needs
exist, not to create needs.
C. Are Advertising and Marketing Necessary?
1. Products are designed to meet existing needs; advertising helps

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 communicate their availability.
2. The economics of information perspective suggests advertising provides an
important source of consumer information which consumers are willing to
accept because it reduces the economic cost associated with searching for
products
A. Do Marketers Promise Miracles?
1. Advertisers do not know enough about people to manipulate them.
2. The failure rate for new products ranges from 40 to 80 percent
B. Materialism: Are You What You Own?
1. Materialism refers to the importance people attach to worldly possessions.
2. Materialists are more likely to value possessions for their status and
appearance- related meanings.
3. Materialists value the inherent qualities of what they buy. One related
dimension is provenance. Provenance means shoppers are willing to pay
more for an item when they know exactly where it comes from. Curation
refers to the use of an expert who carefully chooses pieces to include in a
collection of consumer products. Table 4.1 summarizes some of the
similarities and differences between “old” and “new” materialism.
II. Consumers’ Rights and Product Satisfaction
Consumers have three options to pursue when they are dissatisfied with a product: 1) voice
response, 2) private response, and 3) third-party response. Several factors influence which
route we choose.
A. Market Regulation
1. Several federal agencies oversee consumer-related activities in the U.S. These
include the Department of Agriculture, the Federal Trade Commission, the
Food and Drug Administration, the Securities and Exchange Commission, and
the Environmental Protection Agency. Table 2.1 presents consumer legislation
that is designed to protect consumers and Table 2.2 lists major U.S. regulatory
agencies.
2. the publication of books such as Rachel Carson’s Silent Spring in 1962,
which attached the irresponsible use of pesticides, and Ralph Nader’s Unsafe
at Any Speed in 1965, prompted these movements.
3. The Obama Administration issued voluntary guidelines that food products
targeted to children ages 2-17 would have to provide a meaningful contribution
to a healthy diet and would have to meet limits for harmful ingredients.
4. Corrective advertising refers to the use of advertising by a company to inform
consumers of messages it previously published that were wrong or misleading.
B. Consumerism
1. Adbusters is a nonprofit organization that discourages rampant
commercialism and advocates for social activism. These organizations use
culture jamming, a strategy aimed to disrupt efforts by the corporate world
to dominate our cultural landscape
2. John F. Kennedy declared a “Declaration of Consumer Rights” in 1962.
These include the right to safety, the right to be informed, the right to redress,

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 and the right to choice.
3. Some consumer researchers are not only seeking to study consumer responses
but to rectify what they see as pressing social problems in the marketplace.
This is known as participatory action research (PAR) or Transformative
Consumer Research (TCR).
C. Social Marketing and Corporate Social Responsibility (CSR)
Social marketing uses marketing techniques normally employed to sell beer or
detergent to encourage positive behaviors such as increased literacy and to
discourage negative activities such as drunk driving. Many firms today try to
integrate corporate social responsibility (CSR) into their business models. CSR
describes processes that encourage the organization to make a positive impact on
the various stakeholders in its community. Cause marketing is a popular strategy
that aligns a company or brand with a cause to generate business and societal
benefits.
II. Major Policy Issues Relevant to Consumer Behavior
A. Data Privacy and Identity Theft
1. One of the biggest issues marketers face relates to how much they can or
should know about their customers. Technologies record much of our activities
including our location if we carry a smartphone with GPS. Our digital actions
may even have financial value because of an industry called real-time
bidding, an electronic trading system that sells ad space on the Web pages
people click on the moment they visit.
2. Identity theft occurs when someone steals your personal information and uses
it without your permission. It is the most common consumer complaint
according to the FTC. Phishing occurs when people receive fraudulent emails
that ask them to supply account information. Consumers are also suspect to
botnets that hijack computers without a trace.
3. Locational privacy is a related issue as GPS tracking technology
identifies and records consumer locations.
B. Market Access
For many, market access is limited due to physical, mental, economic, or social
barriers.
1. Disabilities affect access to stores both physical and online.
2. Food deserts are Census tracts where 33% or 500 people live more than a
mile from a grocery store in an urban area or more than 10 miles away in a
rural area.
3. Media literacy refers to a consumer’s ability to access, analyze, evaluate,
and communicate information in a variety of forms, including print and
non-print messages. Functional literacy refers to the ability to read
sufficiently to carry out everyday tasks.
C. Sustainability and Environmental Stewardship
1. Sustainability is not just about “do-gooder” efforts that reduce a
company’s carbon footprint; it also benefits companies financially. A triple
bottom-line orientation refers to business strategies that strive to maximize
return in three ways:
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  Financial
 Social
 Environmental
2. Cradle-to-cradle means that the organization aims for its products to be
made from natural materials that are fully reusable or recyclable so that the
company actually uses zero resources to make it.
3. Conscientious consumerism means that consumers are paying
attention to sustainability efforts by companies.
D. Green Marketing and Greenwashing
1. As a response to consumer efforts, many firms have chosen to protect or
enhance the natural environment as they go about their business activities.
This practice is known as green marketing.
2. Even though consumers largely support green products, many people don’t
actually buy green. This is in part due to the higher price of green products. It
is also due to distrust because of greenwashing. Greenwashing occurs when
companies make false or exaggerated claims about how environmentally
friendly their products are.
3. Marketers point to a segment of consumers they call LOHAS – an
acronym for “lifestyles of health and sustainability.” Table 2.4 shows that
the LOHAS market divides into five different sectors.
4. Product Disposal: How we get rid of stuff is also an important element of consumer
behavior. Later cycling means that one consumer exchanges something she owns for
something another person owns. There is an underground economy of products that
are sold person to person rather than through traditional market systems. Trading or
reselling products is called recommerce
III. The Dark Side of Consumer Behavior
A. Consumer Terrorism
Disruptions to our financial, electronic, and supply networks are possible through
attacks such as bioterrorism and cyberterrorism.
B. Addictive Consumption
Consumer addition is a physiological or psychological dependency on products or
services.
1. Addiction to Technology. Consumers can also be addicted to technology.
Social media addiction can be compared to a chemical dependency.
2. Technology Issues. Some other issues with technology include
cyberbullying and phantom vibration syndrome.
C. Compulsive Consumption
Compulsive consumption refers to repetitive and often excessive shopping
performed to relieve tension or anxiety. Three common elements characterize
negative or destructive consumer behaviors: 1) the behavior is not by choice, 2)
the gratification of the behavior is short-lived, and 3) the person experiences
strong feelings of regret or guilt.
D. Consumed Consumers
Consumed consumers are people who are used or exploited for commercial gain.
Examples include prostitutes and organ, blood, and hair donors.

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 E. Illegal Acquisition and Product Use
IV. Analysts estimate that the cost of crimes that consumers commit against business totals The
Dark Side of Consumer Behavior
A. Consumer Terrorism
Disruptions to our financial, electronic, and supply networks are possible through
attacks such as bioterrorism and cyberterrorism.
B. Addictive Consumption
Consumer addition is a physiological or psychological dependency on products or
services.
1. Addiction to Technology. Consumers can also be addicted to technology.
Social media addiction can be compared to a chemical dependency.
2. Technology Issues. Some other issues with technology include
cyberbullying and phantom vibration syndrome.
C. Compulsive Consumption
Compulsive consumption refers to repetitive and often excessive shopping
performed to relieve tension or anxiety. Three common elements characterize
negative or destructive consumer behaviors: 1) the behavior is not by choice, 2)
the gratification of the behavior is short-lived, and 3) the person experiences
strong feelings of regret or guilt.
D. Consumed Consumers

Consumed consumers are people who are used or exploited for commercial gain.
Examples include prostitutes and organ, blood, and hair donors.

E. Illegal Acquisition and Product Use

Analysts estimate that the cost of crimes that consumers commit against business totals.

Chapter 3:
PERCEPTION
I. Sensation
A. Sensation refers to the immediate response of our sensory receptors (eyes, ears,
nose, mouth, fingers) to such basic stimuli as light, color, sound, odors, and
textures.
B. Perception is the process by which these sensations are selected, organized, and
interpreted. The study of perception, then, focuses on what we add to these raw
sensations to give them meaning. External stimuli, or sensory inputs, can be
received by our brains on a number of channels.
 The inputs picked up by our five senses constitute the raw data that
begin the perceptual process.
 External stimuli can trigger memories from the past.
 The unique sensory quality can help differentiate a product from the
competition.

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  The resulting responses are an important part of hedonic consumption (the
multi- sensory, fantasy, and emotional aspects of consumers’ interactions
with products). In the era of sensory marketing, companies pay extra
attention to the impact of sensations on product experiences. A sensory
signature is the sensory impression a brand leaves in people’s minds.
C. Vision
Marketers communicate on the visual channel through a product’s color, size, and
styling and rely on visual elements in advertising, store design, and packaging.
Colors can create feelings of arousal, stimulation, relaxation, and so on.
a. Red can create feelings of arousal and stimulate appetite, red backgrounds
perform better when consumers have to remember details, and women in
red are rated as more attractive by men than those who wear blue.
b. Blue can create more relaxing feelings, consumers do better at imaginative
tasks when they are presented on blue backgrounds, and products presented
against blue backdrops are liked better than products shown against red
backdrops.
c. Black is associated with power and mourning.
d. Some reactions are learned through but others are not. Women are drawn
toward brighter tones, perhaps because females see color better than males.
Older people prefer white and bright tones, perhaps because colors look
duller to older people. Hispanics prefer brighter colors, perhaps because of
intense lighting conditions in Latin America. Some cultures do not have
words that correspond to colors available in other cultures.
e. Color (and the choice of color palette) is a key issue in package design.
f. Some color combinations come to be so strongly associated with a corporation
that they become known as the company’s trade dress, and the company may
even be granted exclusive use of these colors
D. Dollars and Scents:
Odors can stir emotions or create a calming feeling. They can invoke memories or relieve
stress. Fragrance cues are processed by the limbic system, the most primitive part of the brain
and the place where immediate emotions are experienced. Recent developments in the use of
fragrance include scented clothes, scented stores, scented cars and planes, scented household
products, and scented advertisements
II. A. Sound
Sound can affect people’s feelings and behaviors. Audio watermarking is a term
to describe when producers weave a sound/motif into a piece of music that acts
like an earworm we compulsively hum. Sound symbolism is the process by
which the way a word sounds influences our assumptions about what it
describes and attributes like its size. Consumers are more likely to recognize
brand names that begin with a hard consonant (K or P). Phonemes (vowel and
consonant sounds) are associated with perceptions of large and small size.
B. Touch
Touch has been shown to be a factor in sale interactions. People are stimulated or
relaxed by sensations that reach the skin. Some view touch like a primal language,
one we learn well before writing and speech. Touch or haptic senses appear to

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 moderate the relationship between product experience and judgment confidence;
i.e., people are more sure about what they perceive when they can touch it. The
Japanese practice, Kansei engineering, is a philosophy that translates customers’
feelings into design elements.

C. Taste
Taste is influenced by biological factors (taste receptors) and cultural factors (the
image and values associated with food influence how we experience taste).
III. The Stages of Perception
As shown in Figure 3.1, the perceptual process is made up of three stages:
 Exposure
 Attention
 Interpretation

A. Stage 1: Exposure

1. Exposure occurs when a stimulus comes within the range of someone’s

sensory receptors. The science that focuses on how the physical environment is
integrated into our personal, subjective world is known as psychophysics.
2. When we define the lowest intensity of a stimulus that can be registered on a
sensory channel, we speak of a threshold for that receptor.
3. The absolute threshold refers to the minimum amount of stimulation that
can be detected on a sensory channel (the sound emitted by a dog whistle is
beyond our auditory absolute threshold, for example).
4. The differential threshold refers to the ability of a sensory system to detect
changes or differences between two stimuli.
a. The minimum difference that can be detected between two stimuli is known
as the
j.n.d. or just noticeable difference (e.g., marketers might want to make sure
that a consumer notices that merchandise has been discounted).
b. A consumer’s ability to detect a difference between two stimuli is
relative. A whispered conversation will not be noticed on a busy
street.
c. Weber’s Law demonstrates that the stronger the initial stimulus, the
greater the change must be for it to be noticed. Cereal boxes need to be
vastly different sizes for consumers to notice. Similarly, most retailers
believe that a price discount must be at least 20 percent for consumers
to notice or to react to it
IV. Subliminal Perception
A. Subliminal Perception is perception that is below the threshold level. It
occurs when the stimulus is below the level of the consumer’s awareness.
B. Embeds are tiny figures inserted into magazine ads via high-speed
photography or airbrushing that are supposed to exert strong but unconscious
influences on readers.

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 C. Does subliminal perception work? Within the marketing context, most
agree the answer is “probably not.” Effective messages must be very
specifically tailored to individuals, rather than the mass messages required by
advertising. Other discouraging factors are:
 Individuals have wide differences in their threshold levels.
 Advertisers cannot control many important variables (such as
viewing distance from the television screen).
 Viewers must give their absolute attention to the screen—most
do not.
 Even if the advertiser induces the desired effect, its works only
at a general level.
D. Stage 2: Attention
Attention refers to the extent to which processing activity is devoted to a particular
stimulus.
1. Consumers are often in a state of sensory overload or are exposed to far
more information than they are capable or willing to process. Today, the
average adult is exposed to about 3,500 pieces of advertising information
every single day.
2. As of 2010, more than half of teens report that they engage in
multitasking, or processing information from more than one medium at
a time.
3. How do Marketers Get Our Attention?
a. Networks try to engage viewers with original content during commercial
breaks.
b. Rich media advertisements online use movement to get viewer
attention (e.g. LowerMyBills.com silhouetted dancers)
c. Teaser ads start a story on television and ask you to go to the website for
the rest of the ad.
d. Doing something novel/unexpected.
e. Perceptual selection means that people attend to only small portion of
stimuli to which they are exposed. Personal and stimulus factors help to
decide which stimuli will be received and which will be avoided.
f. Personal Selection Factors reflect a consumer’s experience, the
result of acquiring and processing stimulation over time, which
influences how much exposure to a particular stimulus a person
accepts.
g. Perceptual filters include perceptual vigilance (consumers are more
likely to be aware of stimuli that relate to their current needs) and
perceptual defense (consumers may not process or distort the meaning of
a threatening stimulus).
h. Adaptation, the degree to which consumers continue to notice a stimulus
over time, is another personal selection factor. The intensity (less
intense), duration (lengthy), discrimination (simple), exposure
(frequent), and relevance (irrelevant) of stimuli affect (increase) the

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 likelihood of adaptation.
i. Stimulus selection factors, or the characteristics of the stimulus itself,
also affect what we notice and what we ignore.
i.We are more likely to notice stimuli that differ from those around
them (e.g. messages that create contrast).
ii. Altering size, color, position, or novelty can create contrast
A. V. Stage 3: Interpretation
Interpretation refers to the meaning that we assign to sensory stimuli. Two people
can see the same event but their interpretation can be completely different.
1. Consumers assign meaning to stimuli based on the schema, or set of beliefs, to
which the stimulus is assigned.
2. Priming is a process where certain properties of a stimulus typically will
evoke a schema that leads us to evaluate the stimulus in terms of other stimuli
we have encountered that are believed to be similar.
3. Identifying and evoking the correct schema is crucial to many marketing
decisions, because this determines what criteria will be used to evaluate the
product, package, or message.
4. Package schematics may influence consumer feelings about the contents of a
package for a better or worse.
5. Stimulus organization occurs as we relate incoming sensations to those
already in memory, based fundamental organizational principles.
6. These principles are based on Gestalt psychology—meaning is derived from
totality of a set of stimuli. In German, gestalt means whole, pattern, or
configuration. Principles include:

· The closure principle—people tend to perceive an

incomplete picture as complete. We fill in the blanks.
· The principle of similarity—consumers tend to group objects that
share similar physical characteristics.
· The figure-ground principle—one part of a stimulus will dominate
(the figure) while other parts recede into the backdrop (the ground).
VI. Semiotics: The Meaning of Meaning
A. Semiotics is the field that examines the correspondence between signs and
symbols and how we assign meanings. From a semiotic perspective, every
marketing message has three basic components:
 The object that is the focus of the message (e.g. Marlboro cigarettes).
 The sign is the sensory imagery that represents the intended
meanings of the object (e.g. the Marlboro cowboy).
 The interpretant is the meaning derived (e.g. rugged, individualistic,
American).
B. Signs are related to objects in one of three ways:
 An icon is a sign that resembles the product in some way (e.g. Ford
Mustang).
 An index is a sign that is connected to a product because they

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 share some property (pine tree on Spic & Span, shared property of
fresh scent).
 A symbol is a sign that is related to a product through either
conventional or agreed-upon associations (Dreyfus Fund lion
represents fearlessness/strength).
A. Hyperreality occurs when advertisers create new relationships between objects
and interpretants by inventing new connections between products and benefits (e.g.,
equating Marlboro cigarettes with the American frontier spirit). Reverse product
placement (where fictional products that appear in shows become popular in the real
world) is an example of hyperreality.

B. Perceptual positioning is important because our evaluation of a product is the

result of what it means rather than what it does. Our perceptions of this meaning are
the basis for the product’s market position. Perceptions of a brand consist of
functional attributes (e.g., its features, its price, and so on) and symbolic attributes
(its image, and what we think it says about us). Positioning strategy is a
fundamental part of a company’s marketing efforts as it uses elements of the
marketing mix to influence the consumer’s interpretation of its meaning. There are
many dimensions that can be used to establish a brand’s position:
 Lifestyle (e.g. Grey Poupon has a higher class condiment)
 Price leadership (e.g. L’Oreal sells Plenitude in discount stores)
 Attributes (e.g. Bounty paper towels are “the quicker picker upper)
 Product class (e.g. Spyder Eclipse is a sporty convertible)
 Competitors (e.g. Northwestern Insurance is “the quiet company”)
 Occasions (e.g. Wrigley’s gum as an alternative to smoking)
 Users (e.g. Levi’s Dockers target men 20s-40s)
 Quality (e.g. Ford “Quality is job 1)

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