Perception: Marketing and Consumer Behavior Challenge
CHAPTER OBJECTIVES
When students finish this chapter they should understand that:
• Perception is a three-stage process that translates raw stimuli into meaning.
• Products and commercial messages often appeal to our senses, but we won’t be influenced by most of them.
• The design of a product today is a key driver of its success or failure. • Subliminal advertising is a controversial—but largely ineffective—way to talk to consumers.
• We interpret the stimuli to which we do pay attention according to learned patterns and expectations.
• The field of semiotics helps us to understand how marketers use symbols to create meaning.
CHAPTER SUMMARY
In this chapter, students will be exposed to the study of perception—the process by which sensations (light, color, taste, odors, and sound) are selected, organized, and interpreted. The study of perception, then, focuses on what we add to or take away from these raw sensations as we choose which to notice, and then go about assigning meaning to them.
Marketing stimuli have important sensory qualities. We rely on colors, odors, sounds, tastes, and textures (the “feel” of products) when forming evaluations of them. Each of these sensations is discussed and placed into proper context of marketing usage and attention attraction.
How do our sensory receptors pick up sensations? The answer is exposure. Exposure is the degree to which people notice a stimulus that is within range of their sensory receptors. A stimulus must be presented at a certain level of intensity before it can be detected by sensory receptors. A consumer’s ability to detect whether two stimuli are different (the differential threshold) is an important issue in many marketing decisions (such as changing the package design, altering the size of a product, or reducing its size). An interesting study within the exposure area is that of subliminal perception. Although evidence that subliminal persuasion (exposure
When students finish this chapter they should understand that:
• Perception is a three-stage process that translates raw stimuli into meaning.
• Products and commercial messages often appeal to our senses, but we won’t be influenced by most of them.
• The design of a product today is a key driver of its success or failure. • Subliminal advertising is a controversial—but largely ineffective—way to talk to consumers.
• We interpret the stimuli to which we do pay attention according to learned patterns and expectations.
• The field of semiotics helps us to understand how marketers use symbols to create meaning.
CHAPTER SUMMARY
In this chapter, students will be exposed to the study of perception—the process by which sensations (light, color, taste, odors, and sound) are selected, organized, and interpreted. The study of perception, then, focuses on what we add to or take away from these raw sensations as we choose which to notice, and then go about assigning meaning to them.
Marketing stimuli have important sensory qualities. We rely on colors, odors, sounds, tastes, and textures (the “feel” of products) when forming evaluations of them. Each of these sensations is discussed and placed into proper context of marketing usage and attention attraction.
How do our sensory receptors pick up sensations? The answer is exposure. Exposure is the degree to which people notice a stimulus that is within range of their sensory receptors. A stimulus must be presented at a certain level of intensity before it can be detected by sensory receptors. A consumer’s ability to detect whether two stimuli are different (the differential threshold) is an important issue in many marketing decisions (such as changing the package design, altering the size of a product, or reducing its size). An interesting study within the exposure area is that of subliminal perception. Although evidence that subliminal persuasion (exposure