Consumer Behavior: Buying, Having, and Being: Thirteenth Edition

Consumer Behavior: Buying, Having, and
Being
Thirteenth Edition
Chapter 3
Perception
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Learning Objectives
3.1 Products and commercial messages often appeal to our
senses, but because of the profusion of these messages we
don’t notice most of them
3.2 Perception is a three-stage process that translates raw
stimuli into meaning
3.3 The field of semiotics helps us to understand how
marketers use symbols to create meaning.
Learning Objective 3.1
Products and commercial messages often appeal to our
senses, but because of the profusion of these messages we
don’t notice most of them
We as marketers
often forget that
sense is an important
thing to send
messages perfectly.
Senses is meant here
is the ability of
consumers to feel
something about the
product.
Sensation
• Vision
• Scent
• Sound
• Touch
• Taste
Sensory Marketing
• Companies think carefully about the impact of sensations
on our product experiences.
Vision (1 of 2)
• Trade dress
– Some color combinations come to be so strongly
associated with a corporation
that they become known as the company’s trade dress
• Color forecasts
Vision (2 of 2)
Table 3.1 Marketing Applications of Colors
Color Associations Marketing Applications

Yellow Optimistic and youthful Used to grab window shoppers’
attention
Red Energy Often seen in clearance sales
Blue Trust and security Banks
Green Wealth Used to create relaxation in stores
Orange Aggressive Call to action: subscribe, buy or sell
Black Powerful and sleek Luxury products
Purple Soothing Beauty or anti-aging products
Source: Adapted from Leo Widrich, “Why Is Facebook Blue? The Science Behind Colors in
Marketing,” Fast Company (May 6, 2013), fastcompany.com accessed February 23, 2015.
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 parfums,
detergents, and more.
Key Concepts in Use of Sound
• Audio watermarking
• Sound symbolism
• Phenomes
Key Concepts in the Use of Touch
• Endowment effect
– It seems that encouraging shoppers to
touch a product encourages them to
imagine they own it, and researchers
know that people value things more
highly if they own them: This is known as
the endowment effect.
• Haptic
– Indeed, researchers are starting to
identify
the important role the haptic (touch)
sense plays in consumer behavior.
• Kansei engineering
– a philosophy that translates customers’
feelings into design elements.
For Reflection (1 of 8)
• Imagine you are the marketing consultant for the package design of a new
brand of premium chocolate.
• What recommendations would you make regarding sight and scent?
• Some studies suggest that as we age, our sensory
detection abilities decline. What are the implications of this
phenomenon for marketers who target elderly consumers?
• How has your sense of touch influenced your reaction to
a product?
• Which of your senses do you feel is most influential in
your perceptions of products?
Perception is a three-stage process that translates raw stimuli into meaning
Stages of Perception
• Exposure
• Attention
• Interpretation
Figure 3.1 Perceptual Process
Stage 1: Key Concepts in Exposure
•Sensory threshold
–Before we consider what else people may choose not to perceive, let’s
consider what they are capable of perceiving. By this we mean that stimuli
may be above or below a person’s sensory threshold, which is the point at
which it is strong enough to make a conscious impact in his or her
awareness.
•Psychophysics
–The science of psychophysics focuses on how people integrate the
physical environment into their personal, subjective worlds. Its like youtube
or Instagram algorithm.
•Absolute threshold
–absolute threshold refers to the minimum amount of stimulation a person
can detect on a given sensory channel. The sound a dog whistle emits is at
too high a frequency for human ears to pick up, so this stimulus is beyond
our auditory absolute threshold.
Stage 1: Key Concepts in Exposure
•Differential threshold
–differential threshold refers to the ability of a sensory system to detect changes in
or differences between two stimuli
•J N D
–The minimum difference we can detect between two stimuli is the just noticeable
difference (j.n.d.).
•Weber’s Law
–In the 19th century, a psychophysicist named Ernst Weber found that the amount
of change required for the perceiver to notice a change systematically relates to the
intensity of the original stimulus. The stronger the initial stimulus, the greater a
change must be for us to notice it. This relationship is Weber’s Law.
The Pepsi Logo over Time
Subliminal Perception
• Subliminal perception refers to a
stimulus below the level of the consumer’s
awareness.
• Embeds
– Marketers supposedly send subliminal
messages on both visual and aural
channels.
– Embeds are tiny figures they insert into
magazine advertising via highspeed
photography or airbrushing. These
hidden images, usually of a sexual
nature, supposedly exert strong but
unconscious influences on innocent
readers.
Stage 2: Attention
• Attention is the extent to which processing activity is devoted to a particular
stimulus
• Consumers experience sensory overload
– we are exposed to far more information than we can process. In our
society, much of this bombardment comes from commercial sources, and
the competition for our attention steadily increases. The average adult is
exposed to about 3,500 pieces of advertising information every single day
—up from about 560 per day 30 years ago.
• Marketers need to break through the clutter and grab people’s attention
How Do Marketers Get Attention?
Personal Selection Factors
• Experience
• Perceptual filters
– Perceptual vigilance
▪ means we are more likely to be aware of stimuli that relate to our current
needs.
– Perceptual defense
▪ This means that we tend to see what we want to see—and we don’t see
what we don’t want to see. If a stimulus threatens us in some way, we
may not process it, or we may distort its meaning so that it’s more
acceptable.
Factors Leading to Adaptation
• Intensity—Less-intense stimuli (e.g., soft sounds or dim colors) habituate
because they have less sensory impact.
• Discrimination—Simple stimuli habituate because they do not require
attention to detail.
• Exposure—Frequently encountered stimuli habituate as the rate of exposure
increases.
• Relevance—Stimuli that are irrelevant or unimportant habituate because they
fail to attract attention.
Stimulus Selection Factors
Contrast
• Size—The size of the stimulus itself in contrast to the competition helps to determine if it will
command attention. Readership of a magazine ad increases in proportion to the size of the ad.
• Color—As we’ve seen, color is a powerful way to draw attention to a product or
to give it a distinct identity.
• Position—Not surprisingly, we stand a better chance of noticing stimuli that are in places
where we’re more likely to look. That’s why the competition is so heated among suppliers to
have their products displayed in stores at eye level.
• Novelty—Stimuli that appear in unexpected ways or places tend to grab our attention.
Packages that “stand out” visually on store shelves have an advantage, especially when the
consumer doesn’t have a strong preference for brands in the category and he or she needs to
make rapid decisions.
Figure 3.3 The Golden Triangle
Eye-tracking studies
reveal that people
typically spend most of
their time on a website
looking at the “golden
triangle” outlined by
yellow, orange and red.
Source: Enquiro Search Solutions, Inc. (Now Mediative Performance L P).
Interpretation
• Interpretation refers to the meaning we assign to sensory
stimuli, which is based on a schema
Source: Client: XXXLutz; Head of Marketing: Mag. Thomas Saliger; Agency: Demner,
Merlicek & Bergmann; Account Supervisor: Andrea Kliment; Account Manager: Albin
Lenzer; Creative Directors: Rosa Haider, Tolga Buyukdoganay; Art Directors: Tolga
Buyukdoganay, Rene Pichler; Copywriter: Alistair Thompson.
• How much of a change would be needed in a favorite brand’s price, package
size, or logo would be needed for you to notice the difference?
• How would differences in these variables affect your purchase decisions?
• Do you think that subliminal perception works?
• Under what conditions could it work?
The field of semiotics helps us to understand how marketers
use symbols to create meaning.
Stimulus Organization
• Gestalt: The whole is greater than the sum of its parts
– Closure: people perceive an incomplete picture as
complete
– Similarity: consumers group together objects that share
similar physical characteristics
– Figure-ground: one part of the stimulus will dominate
(the figure) while the other parts recede into the
background (ground)
Figure 3.4 Semiotic Relationships
Icon for this is crown with horse and lion
But the symbol is the meaning of its
• Object
• Sign
• Interpretant
• Icon
• Index
index
• Symbol
Examples of Brand Positioning
Lifestyle Grey Poupon is “high class”
Price leadership L’Oreal sells Noisome brand face cream
Attributes Bounty is “quicker picker upper”
Product class The Spyder Eclipse is a sporty convertible
Competitors Northwestern Insurance is the quiet company
Occasions Use Wrigley’s gum when you can’t smoke
Users Levi’s Dockers targeted to young men
Quality At Ford, “Quality is Job 1”
Think of a commercial you have recently seen and explain the object, sign and
interpretant.
• Give an example when you were affected by closure, similarity, or the figure
ground principle.
• How do your favorite brands position themselves in the marketplace?
• Which possible positioning strategies seem to be most effective?
Chapter Summary
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.
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Consumer Behavior: Buying, Having, and Being: Thirteenth Edition

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Consumer Behavior: Buying, Having, and

Slides in this presentation contain hyperlinks.

Color Associations Marketing Applications

Source: Enquiro Search Solutions, Inc. (Now Mediative Performance L P).

But the symbol is the meaning of its

Price leadership L’Oreal sells Noisome brand face cream

Attributes Bounty is “quicker picker upper”

Product class The Spyder Eclipse is a sporty convertible

Competitors Northwestern Insurance is the quiet company

Occasions Use Wrigley’s gum when you can’t smoke

Users Levi’s Dockers targeted to young men

Quality At Ford, “Quality is Job 1”

This work is protected by United States copyright laws and is

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