1. Consumer Behavior #5 CONSUMER Perception
Chapter 2 is the first chapter in Section 2 of the book. In addition, Section 2 includes the coverage of perception, learning and memory, motivation, the self, and personality and psychographics.
Chapter 2 describes the process of perception. Perception is how we absorb and interpret information about products and other people from the outside world.
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2. Learning Objective 1
Perception is a three-stage process that translates raw stimuli into meaning.
Perception is the process by which sensations are selected, organized, and interpreted.
Sensation is the immediate response of our sensory receptors (eyes, ears,
nose, mouth, and fingers) to
basic stimuli (light, color, sound,
odor, and texture).
The three stages of perception are exposure, attention, and interpretation. Our chapter opens with the story of Gary and his search for milk while traveling abroad. Many countries use ultra heat treated (UHT) milk, which allows milk to be stored as a shelf-stable product. Gary rejects the milk. Why? He’s learned to equate the cold temperature of refrigerated milk with freshness, so he experienced a negative physical reaction when confronted with a product that contradicted his expectations.
Our first objective in this chapter explains this three-step process.
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3. Hemispheric Lateralization (Exhibit 3.3)

4. Hemispheric Lateralization
Right hemisphere
Processing music
Grasping visual/spatial information
Forming inferences
Drawing conclusions
Left hemisphere— Processing units that can be combined, e.g.,
Counting
Processing unfamiliar words
Forming sentences

5. Sensory Systems Vision Scent Sound Touch Taste
Our senses play quite a role in the decisions marketers make. For instance, marketers rely heavily on visual elements in advertising, store design, and packaging. They communicate meanings on the visual channel through a product’s color, size, and styling. An interest in scent has spawned new products. Some brands utilize scent easily. For instance, Starbucks requires baristas to grind a batch of coffee each time they brew a post instead of just once each morning to ensure customers have that intense smell during their Starbucks’ experience. Stores and restaurants often play certain kinds of music to create a certain mood. Recent research found that participants who simply touch an item for 30 seconds or less had a greater level of attachment with the product. This connection in turn boosted what they were willing to pay for it. A food item’s image and the values we attach to it influence how we experience the actual taste.
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6. Sensory Thresholds
The concept of sensory threshold is important for marketing communications.
The absolute threshold refers to the minimum amount of stimulation a person can detect on any given sensory channel
The differential threshold refers to the ability of a sensory system to detect changes in or differences between two stimuli
The absolute threshold means that the stimulation used by marketers must be sufficient to register. For instance, a highway billboard might have the most entertaining copy ever written, but this genius is wasted if the print is too small for passing motorists to see it. The 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 j.n.d. (just noticeable difference). Sometimes a marketer may want to ensure that consumers notice a change, as when a retailer offers merchandise at a discount. In other situations, the marketer may want to downplay the fact that it has made a change, such as when a store raises a price or a manufacturer reduces the size of a package.
A consumer’s ability to detect a difference between two stimuli is relative. 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 known as Weber’s Law.
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7. For Reflection and Discussion
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?
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?
Sensory marketing means that companies pay extra attention to how our sensations affect our product experiences. Marketers recognize that our senses help us to decide which products appeal to us.
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8. For Reflection and Discussion
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?
The design of a product is
now a key driver of its
success or failure.
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9. Figure 2.1 Perceptual Process
We receive external
stimuli through
our five senses
Figure 2.1 shows how as consumers we are exposed to sensory stimuli through our sensory receptors. We then interpret those stimuli to which we paid attention.
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10. Exposure
Exposure: occurs when there is physical proximity to a stimulus that allows one or more of our five senses the opportunity to be activated
Activation happens when a stimulus meets or exceeds the lower threshold: the minimum amount of stimulus intensity necessary for sensation to occur
Selective exposure is the key!

11. Attention
Attention: the amount of thinking focused in a particular direction.
Mental capacity is the cognitive resource for attention. Cognitive psychology focuses on understanding humans’ mental capacity.
Mental capacity:
Sensory memory
Short-term memory
Long-term memory

12. Mental capacity
Sensory memory: part of capacity used when initially analyzing a stimulus detected by one of our five senses.
Short-term memory: the stimulus is interpreted and contemplated using concepts stored in long-term memory (where thinking occurs). MKT Information must be activated to remain in short-term memory.
Long-term memory: mental ware-house where knowledge is stored

13. Mental capacity
The size or capacity of short-term memory is also limited.
Size of short-term memory is measured in informational chunks, a grouping of information that can be processed as a whole unit.
Capacity varies from 4 to 7 chunks.
Disclosing more product information may actually confuse consumers rather than help them
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14. Learning Objective 5
Subliminal advertising is a controversial but largely ineffective way to talk to consumers
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15. Subliminal Techniques
Embeds: figures that are inserted into magazine advertising by using high-speed photography or airbrushing.
Subliminal auditory perception: sounds, music, or voice text inserted into advertising.
Marketers can use both visual and aural channels to send subliminal messages, supposedly. Embeds are tiny figures that are inserted into magazine advertising via high-speed photography or airbrushing. These hidden figures supposedly exert a strong but unconscious influence on the reader. We can do something similar for auditory messages. However, there is no evidence to support that subliminal stimuli can bring about desired changes in behavior.
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16. Examples of Subliminal Advertisement
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17. Examples of Subliminal Advertisement
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18. Examples of Subliminal Advertisement
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19. Show video: Subliminal message
For Reflection
Show video: Subliminal message
Do you think that subliminal perception works?
Under what conditions could it work?
Some research by clinical psychologists suggests that subliminal messages can influence people under very specific conditions, though it is doubtful that these techniques would be of much use in most marketing contexts. For this kind of message to have a prayer of working, an advertiser has to tailor it specifically to an individual rather than the mass messages suitable for the general public.
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20. Learning Objective 6
We interpret the stimuli to which we do pay attention according to learned patterns and expectations.
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21. First Step: Selective Attention
Attention is the extent to which processing activity is devoted to a particular stimulus.
Selective Attention is the cognitive process of selectively concentrating on one aspect of the environment while ignoring other things.
Attention refers to the extent to which processing activity is devoted to a particular stimulus. The allocation of processing activity can vary depending on the characteristics of the stimulus and the recipient. Although we live in an information society, consumers are often in a state of sensory overload. Sensory overload means consumers are exposed to far more information than they can process. Much of this comes from commercial sources. We are exposed to thousands of advertising messages each day in addition to the other types of stimuli we sense. This camera ad from Singapore reminds us that consumers do tune out stimuli.
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22. Selective Exposure and Attention
Two types of factors often influence our selection of stimuli from the environment: stimuli factors and personal factors
Stimuli factors refer to strength of the input (ie., stimulation of any of the sensory systems: visual, auditory, olfactory, and tactile) is important to reach the arousal threshold.
The most common and important stimulus factor in perceptual selection is conontrast, the extent to which a given stimulus is physically different from the other stimuli around it.
Other stimulus factors include: intensity, size, motion,repetition (TV advertisement), novelty-familiarity , and bold, italik.
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23. How Do Marketers Get Attention?
Personal factors
Experience
Perceptual filters
Perceptual vigilance
Perceptual defense
Adaptation
Stimulus factors
Contrast
Size
Color
Position
Novelty
Experience is the result of acquiring and processing stimulation over time. It helps to determine how much exposure to a particular stimulus a person accepts. Perceptual filters based on our past experiences influence what we decide to process. Perceptual filters include vigilance, defense, and adaptation. Vigilance means consumers are more likely to be aware of
stimuli that relate to their current needs. A consumer who rarely notices car ads will become very much aware of them when she or he is in the market for a new car. The flip side of perceptual vigilance is perceptual defense. This means that people see what they want to see—and don’t see what they don’t want to see. If a stimulus is threatening to us in some way, we may not process it, or we may distort its meaning so that it’s more acceptable. Adaptation can also affect attention; adaptation is discussed further on the next slide.
In addition to the receiver’s mindset, characteristics of the stimulus itself play an important role in determining what we notice and what we ignore. Marketers need to understand these factors so they can create messages and packages that will have a better chance of cutting through the clutter. Several characteristics can aid in enhancing the chances of a stimulus for being noticed including size, color, position, and novelty.
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24. Factors Leading to Adaptation
Intensity
Duration
Discrimination
Exposure
Adaptation is the degree to which consumers continue to notice a stimulus over time. The process of adaptation occurs when consumers no longer pay attention to a stimulus because it is so familiar. A consumer can “habituate” and require increasingly stronger “doses” of a stimulus to notice it. Several factors can lead to adaptation. Less intense stimuli have less sensory impact. Stimuli that require relatively lengthy exposure in order to be processed habituate because they require a long attention span. Simple stimuli habituate because they do not require attention to detail. Frequently encountered stimuli habituate as the rate of exposure increases. Stimuli that are irrelevant or unimportant habituate because they fail to attract attention.
Relevance
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25. Were the techniques effective?
For Reflection
How have you seen brands use size, color, and novelty to encourage you to pay attention to a message?
Were the techniques effective?
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26. Learning Objective 7
The field of semiotics helps us to understand how marketers use symbols to create meaning
To help them understand how consumers interpret the meanings of symbols, some marketers turn to semiotics. Semiotics is the study of correspondence between signs and symbols and their roles in how we assign meanings. This figure illustrates the meaning of the three semiotic parts of a marketing message: 1) the object, 2) the sign, and 3) the interpretant. For Marlboro cigarettes, the cigarettes are the product. The symbol is the cowboy which can be interpreted to mean rugged American.
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27. Step 2: Stimulus Organization
Perceptual organization is a collective term for a diverse set of processes that contribute to the emergence of order in the visual input.
Organizing raw sensory stimuli into meaningful experiences involves a set of mental activities that includes thinking, knowing, and remembering.
Knowledge and experience are extremely important to perception, because they help us make sense of the input to our sensory systems.
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28. Step 2: Stimulus Organization
Gestalt Laws of Perceptual Organization.
Gestalt: the whole is greater than the sum of its parts.
Gestalt psychology was founded by German thinkers Max Wertheimer, Wolfgang Kohler, and Kurt Koffka and focused on how people interpret the world.
Gestalt psychologists developed a set of principles to explain perceptual organization, or how smaller objects are grouped to form larger ones. These principles are often referred to as the “laws of perceptual organization.”
One factor that determines how we will interpret a stimulus is the relationship we assume it has with other events, sensations, or images in memory. Our brains tend to relate incoming sensations to others already in memory based on some fundamental organizational principles. These principles derive from Gestalt psychology, a school of thought that maintains that people interpret meaning from the totality of a set of stimuli rather than from an individual stimulus. The German word Gestalt roughly means whole, pattern, or configuration, and we summarize this term as the whole is greater than the sum of its parts. The Gestalt perspective provides several principles that relate to the way our brains organize stimuli including the closure principle, the principle of similarity, and the figure-ground principle.
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29. Step 2: Stimulus Organization
Gestalt: the whole is greater than the sum of its parts. There are five main laws of grouping: proximity, similarity, continuity, closure, and common fate.
A sixth law, that of simplicity, encompasses all of these laws.
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)
One factor that determines how we will interpret a stimulus is the relationship we assume it has with other events, sensations, or images in memory. Our brains tend to relate incoming sensations to others already in memory based on some fundamental organizational principles. These principles derive from Gestalt psychology, a school of thought that maintains that people interpret meaning from the totality of a set of stimuli rather than from an individual stimulus. The German word Gestalt roughly means whole, pattern, or configuration, and we summarize this term as the whole is greater than the sum of its parts. The Gestalt perspective provides several principles that relate to the way our brains organize stimuli including the closure principle, the principle of similarity, and the figure-ground principle.
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30. The law of similarity and pragnanz

31. The law of proximity and continuity

32. Law of similarity
Which two go togather?

33. The law of closure

34. The law of closure(封閉性)

35. The "figure and ground" illusion
Notice that once you
perceive an object, the area around that
Object becomes the background
This illusion is commonly experienced
when one gazes at the illustration of a
black vase the outline of which is created
by two white profiles.
At any moment one will be able to see either the black vase (in the centre area) as "figure" or the white profiles on each side (in which case the black is seen as "ground"). The fluctuations of figure and ground may occur even when one fails deliberately to shift attention, appearing without conscious effort. Seeing one aspect apparently excludes seeing the other.

36. The "figure and ground" illusion
Do you see an old man or two lovers

37. What do you see? An old woman or a young lady?

38. Application of the Figure-Ground Principle
This ad for the Australian postal service uses an application of the figure-ground principle.
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39. Atmospheric perspective and Linear Perspective
Atmospheric perspective--When we
look out over vast distances, faraway
points look hazy or blurry. This effect
is known as atmospheric perspective,
and it helps us to judge distances.
In this picture, the ridges that are farther
away appear hazier and less detailed than the closer ridges.
Linear Perspective--parallel lines, such as the
white lines of this road, appear to converge
with greater distance and reach a vanishing
point at the horizon. We use our knowledge
of linear perspective to help us judge distances

40. Context effect
The context in which an object appears influences our perception of it. In Example A of this illustration, you perceive a B or an 8 depending on whether you read the row of letters or the column of numbers. In Example B, the green circles are the same size but appear to be different sizes because of the context of the surrounding red circles.

41. Illusions of Length
In the Müller-Lyer illusion, left, the slanted lines cause horizontal line segment AB to appear longer than line segment CD. The two line segments actually are the same length. In the Ponzo illusion, right, the top horizontal line seems longer than the lower horizontal line, even though the two lines are equal in length.

42. Illusions of Length

43. Illusions of Direction

44. Factors that influence interpretation
1. schemata
2. past experiences
3. expectations
4. individual predispositions

45. Factors that influence interpretation
1. schemata
It can be described as a mental structure of pre-conceived ideas, a framework representing some aspect of the world, or a system of organizing and perceiving new information.[2]
Schemata influence attention and the absorption of new knowledge: people are more likely to notice things that fit into their schema, while re-interpreting contradictions to the schema as exceptions or distorting them to fit.
Schemata have a tendency to remain unchanged, even in the face of contradictory information, and it can help in understanding the world and the rapidly changing environment.

46. Cognitive structures about people and events
1. Schemata– four basic types of schemata
(A) prototype
(B) personal construct
(C) stereotype
(D) scripts