2. 8 Perception: Worlds of Sensations Chapter McGraw-Hill/Irwin
Copyright © 2004 by The McGraw-Hill Companies, Inc. All rights reserved.

3. Learning Objectives
After completing this chapter, you should be able to:
Explain the meaning of and relationship between perceptions and sensations and discuss some basic facts about the classic five sensory receptors: Vision, smell, hearing, touch, and taste.
Describe how sensory thresholds are used by marketers, including marketing applications of Weber’s law.
Outline the process through which our sensory systems select, organize, and interpret stimuli, including preattentive processing, perceptual selection, organization and categorization, interpretation, and elaboration.

4. Learning Objectives (continued)
Describe some basic tools consumers use in primitive categorization, including grouping, figure, and ground, and develop marketing applications using these three tools.
Explain how elaboration of marketing stimuli influences consumer perceptions and preferences.
Define some basic features of perceptual preferences and consumer tastes.

5. Perception
Perception is a process of giving meaning to sensory stimuli.
People’s perceptions are the way they sense and interpret the world around them.
Sensory preferences are the sights, sounds, tastes, smells, and feelings that people like over other sensations.
People often do not recognize that perceptions are created through indirect inference and assume others perceive situations in the same way. This bias is known as phenomenal absolutism.

6. Sensation and Sensory Thresholds
People detect stimuli through a variety of sensory receptors--the organs of perception.
NOSE
EYES
MOUTH
EARS
SKIN

7. Sensory Thresholds Absolute Threshold Differential Threshold
The lowest level of input to be detected by the various sensory receptors in the human body.
Perceptual filters are used to screen out unwanted stimuli.
Differential Threshold
Just noticeable difference (JND) - the minimum change in sensation necessary for a person to detect it.
Weber’s law - the stronger the initial sensory stimulus, the greater the additional intensity needed for the second stimulus to be perceived as different.

8. Consumer Chronicles 8.4 Some Approximate Detection Threshold Values
Sense Detection
Modality Threshold
Light A candle flame seen at miles or a dark clear night.
Sound The tick of a watch under quiet conditions at 20 feet.
Taste One teaspoon of sugar in two gallons of water.
Smell One drop of perfume diffused into the entire volume of a three-room apartment.
Touch The wing of a bee falling on your back from a distance of one centimeter.
CONSUMER CHRONICLES 8.4
Source: Donald H. McBurney and Virginia B. Collings, Introduction to Sensation/Perception (Englewood Cliffs, NJ: Prentice Hall, 1977), p. 7.

9. The Perceptual Process
Preattentive Processing
the simultaneous preconscious monitoring of all sensory channels for events that will require a shift in attention
Perceptual Selection
that portion of stimuli selected for conscious processing or focal attention
Perceptual Organization
how consumers classify perceptions into categories and apply prior knowledge about the categories to organize them.
Perceptual Interpretation and Elaboration
how consumers derive meaning from the totality of the perceptual information they receive at a given moment.

10. Exposure and Selection
Individual Determinants
Motives and goals
perceptual vigilance
Stimulus Determinants
Size
Color
Contrast
Position
Novelty
Directionality
Movement
Isolation
Priori Learning

11. Perceptual Organization
Consumers classify perceptions into categories
Consumers apply prior knowledge about categories to organize them
Categories are shaped by goals, values, or the need to respond
Categories are socially and culturally constructed and learned
Categorization involves comparison between a perceived target and categorical knowledge.

12. Perceptual Organization
Grouping
Individuals assume that options found in proximity to one another go together.
Figure and ground
Individuals determine what aspects of stimuli they should focus on.
Closure
Individuals use partial cues to complete an image.

13. Exhibit 8.1 A Classic Figure-and-Ground Problem

14. Interpretation and Elaboration
Schemas
Organized collections of beliefs and feelings that a person has about objects, ideas, people, or situations.
Scripts
Sequences of actions associated with objects, ideas, people, or situations.

15. Perceptual Inference Perceptual Inferences
Interpretations that go beyond the information given.
Inferences are influenced by:
Context, goals, prior knowledge, personal experiences
Marketing Implications
brand extensions
priming
What flavor is this ice cream cone?

16. Elaboration
Elaboration: the extent to which perceptual stimuli are integrated with prior knowledge structure
High levels of elaboration lead to counterarguing, problem-solving, day-dreaming, and fantasizing
Low levels of elaboration involve simple recognition
A boomerang effect occurs when the attitude change is opposite to that advocated in the persuasive message.

17. Perceptual Judgments and Marketing Strategies
Perceived Quality
the consumer’s evaluative judgment about an entity’s overall excellence or superiority in providing desired benefits.
Predictive Value
the degree to which consumers associate a given cue with product quality, the confidence value of a cue, and the degree to which consumers have confidence in their ability to use and judge the cue accurately
extrinsic cues - price, brand name, packaging, store name, etc.
intrinsic cues - taste, texture, aroma, etc.

18. Perceptions of Quality
Intrinsic Cues of Product Quality
Extrinsic Cues of Product Quality:
Brand name
Price
Store image
Manufacturer’s image
Country of origin image

19. Product-Country Image Effects
Product-Country image effects reflect consumers’ use of country of origin or country of manufacture as a cue to infer beliefs about product attributes.
Product-Country image (PCI) is a schematic mental representation of a country’s people, products, culture, and national symbols.
Consumer voting captures the normative dimension of product-country images. By deciding to purchase or avoid a country’s products, consumers “vote” for or against the policies of its government.

20. Key Terms absolute threshold differential threshold elaboration
ad hoc categories
atypicality
autonomic responses
boomerang effect
categorization
closure
consumer voting
contrast effects
country of origin
differential threshold
elaboration
exposure
extrinsic cues
figure and ground
grouping
intrinsic cues
involuntary attention
just noticeable difference (JND)
learned responses
orientation reflex
perceived quality

21. Key Terms (continued) perceptions schemas perceptual filters scripts
perceptual inferences
perceptual organization
perceptual selection
perceptual vigilance
phenomenal absolutism
preattentive processing
predictive value
primitive categorization
product-country image
role taking
schemas
scripts
sensation
sensory preferences
sensory receptors
sensory thresholds
SERVQUAL scale
symbol
taste
transformational advertising
Weber’s law