chapter 2 notes

Chapter 2: Perception
Difference between perception and sensation our own “spin” on things is the perception that we get from it.
Sensation is the immediate response of our sensory reactions to things
Perception is the process by which these sensations are selected, organized, and interpreted.
Perception is what we take away from our raw sensations
Example is the cola and the pepsi, using only senses, we cannot tell the difference between them but if we are to add in perception of the beand, it changes as we interpret our sensations differently on account of the thoughts that we have with the brand itself. Our ultimate preferences are actually determined by using the preconceived perceptions/
Perception is a three part process that turns the raw stimuli into meaning
Only small amount of stimuli are processed in our minds, not everything, selective.
The meaning of the stimulus is interpreted by the individual, who is influenced by his unique biases, needs, and interpretation.
1)Exposure 2)Attention 3)Interpretation
External Stimuli (sensory inputs)-> billboard, jingle, the feel of a soft sweater, smell of a leather jacket.
The inputs that are picked up by our five senses constiture of the raw data that can generate many types of responses.
Example: sensory data coming from the external environment is the song on the radio, generate internal sensory responses when one thinks to what that song means to him and brings back memories of a moment, time, place etc.
Sensory marketing: a new type of marketing where they are focused upon our senses towards things. Example: Omni hoteld, “ paired with a freshly baked muffin” This creates large competitive advantages for companies.
Marketers can appeal to the senses in many ways
Sight: visual elements in ads, store front, design and packaging. Meanings are communicated through what things look like and how different they are from the competitors’.
Colours are very important to the consumer and their senses to how they interpret and associate.
Blue vs. red. Red = attraction, loud, rash, quick, strong
Blue= calm, cool, soft, smooth, relaxed.
As consumers age and are older, they tend to have a yellow cast over their vision, idea was to make products that are tailored to a older crowd to make them white and brighter and cleaner in colour. Example is that lexus sales… 60% of the cars are white for this reason.
The colour is important as it can convey an image of what is actually in the package.
Trade dress= some colour corporations that are so strongly associated with the company and brand, only when consumers may get confused as to what is actually in the package. Think tiffany and Cadbury (purple)
How eyes can make you eat more: the size of a box literally tells you its “okay” to consume more of it.
Glasses: we look at height, not at the width of the glasses
Smaller pakages: some people think that they will eat less because they are lower in calores, but they actually eat more of It because they let the packages control their food intake, not themselves.
Taking more when more variety or larger quantity
Smell: Odors can work in order to create/ diminish self confidence, they can bring up memories, cognition. Plesant scents can increase brand recall, especially when paired with an image.
Odors also depend on where the person is from. America= manly, Germany= lots. Different scents in nations due to the connotations that the nations place upon it.
We process smell in the limbic system, the one that is the most primitive part of the brain that experiences immediate emotions. Ex: fresh cinnamon buns and arosal in men, women smelled shirts that were worn for two days and selected the one that they liked better, saying that we are most attracted to individuals that are most similar to us but not too similar that its nasty and gross.
Different behaviour reactions to stimuli. Ex: chocolate and flowers paired with visual cues= they spend more time amalyzing and comparing and trying other alternatives in the product category. But when pine and clean scented things: morally virtuous acts. Giving back
Vanilla scented in womens clothing and spicy and honey in mens drove sales up
Smell of cookies in public places around the got milk ads.
Hearing: playing music to get passengers to board the plane faster (upbeat), lulling melody to get them prepped for takeoff, stimulus in music increasing during when there is a lull in shopping meaning that the workers slow, playing better music keeps them awake. Downloading ringtone that adults can’t hear.
Touch: coke bottle, identification even in the dark, greater level of attachment to the product if they got to touch it and examine it.
Low autotelics: the touch and feel influences them
High autotelics: the touch and feel does not influence them
Carpet= product is judged against the softness of the carpet but whn viewed from a distance, it was viewed more positively since they were not standing on it.
Kansei engineering: Japanese firm translated what customers want into the designs of their cars, making taller, giving sportiness and cool factors, control. Depending on what the consumer had said the wanted.
Primacy effect for shorter sequences
Recency effect for longer sequences
More knowledgeable customers: have to show them the best one last, same thing if there are many things to be looked at, showcase what you really think is for them at the very end.
If they are not as knowledgeable and there are only a few options put what you think is the best first, as the primacy effect will win.
Taste
Many more tastes are being developed and there are tongue tests
Depending on location and time of the people that you are selling to, what the trend is there? Ex: strawberry milk in china and japan.
Exposure
The way that the consumer comes into contact with the stimulus and has the potential to notice it, if they choose to do so.
Showcasing a Cadillac commercial, they literally used the 5 secon thing to show their point.
How the concept of a sensory threshold is important for marketing communication
What stimuli do people pick up on? How the physical world is impacting our senses: psychographics The absolute threshold: the lowest intensity of a stimulus that can be registered on a sensory channel. Dog whistle is outside of this threshold. The billboard could have the most amazing thing ever written on it but it will be useless if no one sees it.
The differential threshold: the ability of a sensory system to detect a difference between two stimuli. The minimum change is called the JND
When will it be noticed? Its critical to know this. Sometimes, they want to surpass this threshold so that people notice if the price is lowerd, somestimes the opposite to when the price is higher or the product is in a smaller package.
This is always in comparison to other stimuli in question/ in comparison to.
The amount of change to be noticed is systematically related to the original intensity of the stimulus. This is called “Weber’s law”. K( constant increase or decrease necessary for the stimulus to be noticed) = minimal change in intensity of the stimulus to be noticed to the person(JND)/ the intensity of the stimulus before
Markdown should be at least 20% so that customers notice. It is the ratios* not the absolute differences that are important to describe the least noticeable differences in sensory discrimination.
JND is important because- 1) reductions in product size, increase in price, changing in packaging
2) so that product improvements are noticed by the public. Most of the time you are being given less that the noticeable difference so that they can pass on price changes, make the packaging smaller and so that you don’t notice this.
More air in bags, slimmer boxes, fewer sheets of toilet paper. Retailers want to fit more things onto shelves, pressures to make the boxes smaller.
Subliminal advertising is a way, but not an effective one
Subliminal perception: below the point that we can tell that there was a change.
Its not not noticeable, if you can see or hear it, its not subliminal!
It doesn’t actually work.
Many factors can play a role in what stimuli consumers will pay attention to
Attention is the extent to which your brains process activity is devoted to a particular stimulus. Attention depends on many things.
Too much of a good thing, sensory overload, exposed to much more information than they are willing to process. Lots of competition in the market place is adding onto this. Break through the clutter is what they are trying to do in order to market to multi taskers.
Guerilla marketing: marketing in different kinds of ways, bombarding, attacking unexpectedly.
Perceptual selectivity: we only pay attention to certain stimuli being presented to us. How do consumers choose to what they pay attention to? Personal and stimulus factors play a part in this.
Personal selection factors:
Perceptual filters: relying on past experiences,
Perceptial vigilance : factor in selective exposure. Customers are more likely to be aware of stimuli that relate to their current needs (conscious or unconscious). perceptual defense: people see what they want to see and block out what they don’t. “weight loss ad, person thinks, oh im skinny, I don’t need this when in reality, they do.” We may distort the meaning of the message so that we see it for what we want, not what it actually is.
Adaptation: degree to which consumer continues to notice a stimulus over time. No longer pay attention to the stimulus because they see it so often. Need a stronger one in order for the effort to be noticed. This is what normally contributes to adaptation: intensity(habituated to less intense stimuli because they have less of a sensory impact) duration: longer ones because they demand more time to focus on discrimination: simple ones, they don’t have any detail exposure: as the exposure goes up, more desensitized to it. Relevance: irrelevant or not important.

Stimulus Selection Factors:
The characteristics of the stimulis play a role in determining to what gets noticed and what does not.
Stimulus that are different from others tend to draw more attention. Applied like this:
* size the size of the stimulus in comparison to the competition helps determine if it will command the attention. Readership of magazine in relation to the size of the advertisement for it.
*colour colour to distinct it from other ones around it. Black and decker, yellow and black to diversify it from dull grey tools.
* position Places that we are most likely to look. Eye level. Toward the front for magazines, right hand side win out the attention of consumers. /warnings on alcohol. Horizontal so that people notice this and distinguish it from clutter.
*Novelty novel stimuli or in unexpected places catch attention
Interpretation of advertisements
The meaning that people assign to sensory stimuli. People can seethe same thing but think of it very differently.
Responses due to schema, set of beliefs, to which the stimulus is assigned. Cognitive framework that helps organize and build and interpret information that surrounds the stimulus, like a brand name.
Brand name can communicate expectations about product attributes and can colour perceptions of product performance by associating it with the proper schema. Ex: “Nike” = trendy, run, fast, sexy.
More descriptive labels “decadent chocolate pudding” better than “chocolate pudding”. You assume it tastes better due to the wording.
Stimulus Organization
Stimulus not looked at just on its own; it is looked at in conjunction with other images, events, sensations. Ex: bright teddy grahams = fun, reinforces that the snack is fun and yummy, people associate yellow with fun and happy things.
Brain works like this: relating incoming sensations to ones that we already have in memory. Derived from Gestalt psychology, a school of thoughts that people get meaning from the totality, rather than just one stimulus by itself.
The whole is greater than the sum of its parts.
The three perceptual tendencies are:
Principle of closure: we fill in the blanks for things that we do not have, omit certain aspects of advertisement in order to increase brand recall
Principle of similarity: grouping things that look alike together. Green giant example. Everything is green and we will increase brand recall and our minds will think of that brand when we see the colour on the frozen veggies. Figure ground principle: one part of the stimulus will dominate the photo wheras the others will fade into the background, make one thing stand out and put everything else into the background.
Project their own desires and pre conceived notions onto the things being sampled and showcased.
Perceptual positioning
Perception of a brand: functional attributes and symbolic attributes. Evaluation of a product is what it means rather than what it does. The meaning that the consumers give to it is generally the the market position. It may have to do with our expectation of the product rather than the product itself.
Positioning strategy: the wy that marketers want their brand to be seen in eyes of the consumer. Using elements of the marketing mix in order to influence consuemers interpretations of the brands meaning. Trying to be distinct about attributes that consumers deem as being very important.
Ex: not focus on speed of car, but on something like dog lovers that want a Subaru example.
Repositioning in order to keep up with market changes and demands.
Positioning dimensions:
Price leadership -> lancome = $ but l’oreal which is owned by them is cheap
Attributes-> quicker paper towel
Occasions: kit kat= break snack
Product class- bmw= luxury car
Users: nike high class spikes= pro runner/ high level runner
Design- apple, smart design.