W2 Perception, Interpretation, Senses

W2 Perception, Interpretation, Senses

1. definition

   • Perception is the process by which physical sensations such as sights, sounds and smells are selected, organised and interpreted
   • The eventual interpretation of the stimulus allows it to be assigned meaning
   • Perception is a three stage process that translates raw stimuli into meaning

2. exposure (Hoyer & MacInnis, 2013)

   • reflects the process by which the consumer comes into contact with a stimulus

3. sensation

   • the immediate response of our sensory receptors to stimuli such as light, colour and sounds

4. key concepts in exposure

   • Sensory threshold
     • Stimuli that may be above or below a person’s sensory threshold, or the point at which is strong enough to make a conscious impact in his or her awareness
   • absolute threshold
     • Minimum amount of a stimulation a person can detect on a given sensory channel (a different between something and nothing/the lowest level at which a stimulus can be detected)
   • differential threshold
     • Ability of the sensory system to detect changes in or differences between two stimuli
     • J.N.D (Just Noticeable Differences)
       • the minimum difference we can detect between two stimuli

5. J.N.D & marketing implications

   • Some marketers might not want consumers to notice that they have decreased a product’s size or increased its price
   • Sales promotions and coupons – above the differential threshold as marketers want consumers to notice the difference (use of %)
   • Difference between an old and an improved product
   • Logo and packaging (e.g. shrink the size of packages, ‘greener’ packages, ‘jumbo’ packages)

6. attention

   • The extent to which processing activity is devoted to a particular stimulus
   • The process by which we devote mental activity to a stimulus … necessary for information to be processed… activate our senses
   • Marketers need to break through the clutter -> opportunity to attend the marketer’s message

7. perceptual selection

   • occurs when consumers are in a state of sensory overload and attend to only a small portion of the stimuli that they are exposed to

8. perceptual filters

   • perceptual vigilance
     • individual notices and recognizes the stimuli that may be significant/ interesting to him
   • perceptual defence
     • we will only pay attention to marketing stimuli that we want to see, will avoid marketing stimuli that threaten us
   • adaptation
     • if overexposed to stimuli, then will stop noticing them overtime

9. stimulus

   • contrast
   • size&novelty

10. colour

    • reflection of light
    • colour contrast

11. interpretation

    • Refers to the meaning we assign to sensory stimuli, which is based on a schema
      • Certain properties evoke a schema

12. semiotics

    • Field of semiotics helps us to understand how marketers use symbols to create meaning

13. perceptual principles for organising stimuli

    • Gestalt psychology
    • principle of closure
    • principle of similarity
    • figure ground principle

14. sensory marketing

    • marketing that engages the consumers’ senses and affects their perception, judgment, and behaviour (Krishna, 2012)
    • Recent attention to ‘embodied cognition’ or the idea that without our conscious attention, our bodily sensations help determine the decisions we make, i.e. bodily feelings as a source of information -> how human senses and situations influence human thinking
    • The senses can be rooted in the 1) product itself 2) ambient conditions or 3) advertising messages

15. senses

    • odour
    • texture/haptics
    • sound
    • taste