Chapter 3

Perception
1/31
2/31 Topic Outline

 The Meaning and Influencing Factors of Perception

 Sensory System
 The Stages of Perception
 Perceptual Selectivity
3/31 Opening Case: Gogoro

 Established in 2015 by Horace

Horace Luke
Luke and Matt Taylor. 陸學森

 Business model: internet + battery

swap station + smart scooter.
 Products: Gogoro 1 series was launched in
2016, and sold 10.000, Gogoro 2 series was
launched in 2017…
Matt Taylor
 Faster: 4.0 seconds from 0-50 km/h-95 km/h 尹衍梁
max speed--Cleaner: no harmful emissions-
Efficiency: fully charged for up to 100 km--
Smarter: internet-cellphone-scooter-battery
swap station
 It now has more than 521 battery swap
stations and supports over 35,858 battery
exchanges every day.
4/31 The Meaning and Influencing Factors of Perception

 Perception: is the process by which people select, organize, and

interpret information to form a meaningful picture of the world.

Sensory Stimuli Sensory Receptors The Perceptual Process

Sights Eyes
Sounds Ears
Smells Nose Exposure Attention Interpretation

Taste Mouth
Textures Skin
5/31 The Meaning and Influencing Factors of Perception
Characteristics of Stimuli and Context Effect
Characteristics of stimuli:
 Sensory characteristics: the possibility of impact of stimuli on sensory
receptors
 Informative characteristics: the content of information of the stimuli
 Contrast: the difference between stimuli and the context of stimuli
Context effect: describes the influence of environmental factors on one's
perception of a stimulus
 Respondents evaluated products more harshly when they stood on a tile
floor rather than a carpeted floor
 Fans of romance movies rate them higher when they watch them in a
cold room
6/31 The Meaning and Influencing Factors of Perception
Consumers Characteristics

 Consumer physiological and psychological characteristics

 Age, gender…
 Motivation
 Knowledge
 Emotions
…
7/31 The Meaning and Influencing Factors of Perception

Sensory Marketing and Hedonic Consumption

Sensory marketing: is the process of

winning a consumer’s trust and
attention by appealing to consumer’s
sensory system.
Sensory marketing creates hedonic
consumption: it provides a complete
experience: multisensory, fantasy, and
emotional aspects of consumers’
interactions with products.
8/31 Sensory System
Vision
 Marketers rely heavily on visual elements in advertising, store design,
and packaging to communicate information and persuade
consumer purchase products.
Color Associations Marketing Applications
 Vision stimuli: colors, shapes, Used to grab window shoppers’
sizes…
Yellow Optimistic and youthful
attention

 Colors: may directly influence our Red Energy Often seen in clearance sales
emotions and behaviors.
Blue Trust and Security Banks
 Views of colors may differ between
culture, gender, and age… Green Wealth Used to create relaxation in stores

 Colors play a key role in marketing Orange Aggressive Call to action: subscribe, buy or sell
activities
Black Powerful and sleek Luxury products
 Shapes and sizes: may also directly
influence our perception and behaviors. Purple Soothing Beauty or anti-aging products
9/31 Sensory System
Vision
 What gifts do you hope to receive on Valentine’s Day?
10/31 Sensory System
Sound
Marketers often use music and sound to influence
consumers’ emotions and behaviors.
 Style, melody, and volume of music

Music and chocolate Music and dating

11/31 Sensory System
Smell
 Odors stir emotions and affect our behaviors.
 Odors are often used in many products and marketing activities
 Odors may differ between culture
 Odors may differ between individual people

Ben Yu & Devon Soni Coffee bar

12/31 Sensory System
Touch
 How do you feel if you cannot touch products when you are shopping?
 Touch plays important role in consumer behaviors: apparels, furniture…
 People value things more highly if they can touch products
13/31 Sensory System
Taste
 Our taste receptors obviously contribute to our experience of many
products.
 Taste preferences vary between different culture
 Taste is only one of many attributes of a product
14/31 The Stages of Perception
Stage 1: Exposure
 Exposure: occurs when a stimulus comes within the range of someone’s
sensory receptors
 Sensory Thresholds: is a point at which stimuli is strong enough (not too
high or too low) to make a conscious impact in a person awareness.
 Absolute threshold: refers to 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. The minimum
difference we can detect between two stimuli is the just noticeable
difference (JND)
 Differential threshold and JND is relevant to many marketing situations.
15/31 The Stages of Perception

Stage 1: Exposure

 Subliminal perception: refers to a stimulus below the level of the

consumer’s awareness.
Amount of Stimuli Subliminal experiments

High  “Eat popcorn, drink Coca Cola”.

Conscious awareness
 “Select a Chinese character that you
Conscious threshold like”

Explanations:
Subliminal perception

Sensory threshold
 Incremental Effect Theory
 The Psychodynamic Theory
No perception
of Arousal
Low
16/31 The Stages of Perception
Stage 2: Attention
 Attention: refers to the extent to which
processing activity is devoted to a particular
stimulus
 Sensory overload: consumers are exposed to
more information than they can process.
 Multitasking: when people process
information from more than one medium at a
time, they alternate among their cell phones,
TVs, and laptops.
 How to grab consumers’ attention?
 Products display, packaging…
 Use of rich media
17/31 The Stages of Perception

Stage 2: Attention

Personal selection factors:

 Perceptual vigilance (voluntary attention):
means we are more likely to be aware of
stimuli that relate to our current needs.
 Perceptual defense: means that we tend to
see what we want to see—and we don’t
see what we don’t want to see.
 Involuntary attention: consumers pay
attention to a stimuli because it is novel,
surprised, or threatening to consumers.
18/31 The Stages of Perception
Stage 2: Attention
 Adaption (habituation): consumers are too familiar with the stimuli and tend
to ignore or not paying attention to it.

 Advertising Wearout: advertising

campaign loses its effectiveness
due to overexposure or repeated
overplay ads.
19/31 The Stages of Perception
Stage 2: Attention

Stimulus selection factors: In addition

to the receiver’s mind-set, characteristics
of the stimulus itself play an important
role to determine what we notice and
what we ignore.
 Markets may use a contrast message to
grab consumers’ attention:
 Size
 Color
 Position
 Novelty
20/31 The Stages of Perception

Stage 3: Interpretation
What is this ?
Interpretation: refers to the
meanings we assign to
sensory stimuli.
Delicious?
The meaning we assign to a
stimuli depends on the
environment, culture, the set
of beliefs (schema), and the
Who is more
person his/herself. beautiful ?
21/31 The Stages of Perception
Stage 3: Interpretation

 Stimulus organization:
 We determine the meaning of a stimuli based
on our past experiences (link to other events,
sensations, or images in memory),
expectations, and needs.
 Stimulus organization: refers to how we identify
the components of a stimuli to form a
complete meaning.
 Gestalt psychology: people interpret
meaning from the totality of a set of
stimuli rather than from any individual
stimulus.
22/31 The Stages of Perception
Stage 3: Interpretation
 The Gestalt perspective provides several principles that relate to the
way our brains organize stimuli:
 Figure-ground principle: states that one part of a stimulus will dominate (the
figure), and other parts recede into the background (the ground).

What do you see?

23/31 The Stages of Perception
Stage 3: Interpretation

 Proximity principle: objects near each other tend to be

grouped together
24/31 The Stages of Perception
Stage 3: Interpretation

 Similarity principle: objects that are similar tend to be

grouped together.
25/31 The Stages of Perception
Stage 3: Interpretation

 Continuation principle: individuals tend to group together

curves, lines and other forms that are found in similar
directions
26/31 The Stages of Perception
Stage 3: Interpretation

 Common fate principle: states that objects are perceived

as lines that move along the smoothest path.
27/31 The Stages of Perception
Stage 3: Interpretation

 Closure principle: states that individuals perceive objects

such as shapes, letters, pictures, etc., as being whole when
they are not complete.
28/31 The Stages of Perception
Stage 3: Interpretation
 Semiotic: a discipline that studies the correspondence between signs
and symbols and their roles in how we assign meanings.
29/31 The Stages of Perception
Stage 3: Interpretation
Object
(product)

 Application of semiotics to
marketing Marlbro
Cigarettes
 The object is the product that is the
focus of the message (e.g., Marlboro
cigarettes).
 The sign is the sensory image that
represents the intended meanings of the
Rugged
object (e.g., the Marlboro cowboy). Cowboy
American
 The interpretant is the meaning we
derive from the sign (e.g., rugged, Sign Interpretant
individualistic, American). (Image) (Meaning)
30/31 Perceptual Selectivity

 Perceptual selection: is the tendency not to notice or attend

to only a small portion of the stimuli to which they are
exposed.
 Perceptual selection may lead to perceptual bias (people
misunderstand or distort the meaning of the stimuli)
 Perceptual selection includes:
 Selective exposure
 Selective attention
 Selective distortion
 Selective retention
31/31 Perceptual Selectivity

 Selective exposure: is the tendency people select specific stimuli

they like and ignore the stimuli they don’t like.
 Selective attention: even people select to expose to specific
stimuli, they may pay attention on a particular information and
ignore other information.
 Selective distortion: is the tendency people assign meaning to a
stimuli based on their experiences, values, beliefs, and knowledge.
 Many factors contribute to the process of selective distortion: appearance,
stereotype, unrelated clues, first impression, Halo Effect…
 Selective retention: is the tendency people remember those things
that are interested, important, and related to them.