Perception

CH3
 You can recognize some brands
even without thinking.
Why?

Because you have experienced the

perceptual process

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Perceptual Process

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 What is perception?
• Perception is the process by which people
select, organize and interpret the sensation.

• Sensation refers to the immediate response of

our sensory(eyes, ears, nose, mouth, fingers,
skin) to basic stimuli as light, color, sound,
odor and texture.

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 What sensation do we
usually receive?
Touch

Scent Vision

Sound
Taste

Sensory Marketing: Companies think carefully about

the impact of sensations on our product experiences.
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Sensation Marketing-Scent

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 Vision

We believe what we see.

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 Vision
• Stimuli usually comes from color, size, appearance.
• Color provoke emotion.

Bright color let

people feel the
price of product is
cheap.

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 Vision
• Color provoke emotion.

Deep color let people

feel 【 elegant,
delicate and
charming 】 .

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 Vision
• Reaction to color are biological and cultural.
 Male VS female
 Elders VS kids
 Funeral dress

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 Vision
• Trade dress: colors associated
with specific companies.
1. Grocery: orange, green, red
2. Chocolate: gold, brown
3. Coffee: green, white, black
4. Luxury accessories: white,
tiffany blue

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Marketing Applications of Colors
Color Associations Marketing Applications
Yellow Optimistic and Used to grab window
youthful shoppers’ attention
Red Energy Often seen in clearance sales
Blue Trust and security Banks
Green Wealth Used to create relaxation in
stores
Orange Aggressive Call to action: subscribe, buy
or sell
Black Powerful and sleek Luxury products
Purple Soothing Beauty or anti-aging products
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Marketing Applications of Colors

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 Scents
• Odors can create mood and promote memories
 Stinky tofu
 Dove shampoo
• Affect consumer buying decision
 Marketers use scents to enhance customer
experience
 Starbucks: grind coffee several time during the
day to intense smell
 Dove: send fragrance card on the street
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 Sound
• Sound affect people’s feelings and behaviors
 High tempo VS slow tempo
• It can also provide customer information and
reinforce brand
• Listen and guess what brand it is
1. A
2. B
3. C
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 Touch & Taste
• Haptic senses affect product experience and
judgement
 have a higher level of attachment to the product
 Clothes, toilet papers, cars

• Taste is not as sensitive as other senses(vision,

scent, sound) for consumers.
 Food, snacks, beverage, oral cleaning product

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 New technology provoke new way
for consumers’ sensations.
• Delivers a combination of two or above
sensory experience, enhance customer buying
intention.
 Augmented reality (AR)
 Timberland
 Virtual reality (VR):
 ANA airline “room” VR tour
 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TLOzUVm
-FUg
 Class Activity
Imagine you are the marketing consultant for the
package design of a new brand of premium
chocolate.

What recommendations would you make

regarding sight and scent?

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 GODIVA
• packaging color and texture
• Sell hot chocolate

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Perceptual Process

Contact Select Organize &

stimuli stimuli interpret
stimuli

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 Stage 1: Exposure
• Exposure occurs when a stimulus comes within
range of someone’s sensory reporters.
• Sensory threshold: the point at which the
stimulus is strong enough to make a conscious
impact in his or her awareness.
 Absolute threshold
 Differential threshold

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 Stage 1: Exposure
 Absolute threshold: refers to the minimum
amount of stimulation a person can detect on a
given sensory channel.
 highway billboards are not
big enough to see
 sounds of hawking in night market
 Marketers need to pay attention the absolute
threshold of target audience
 Mobiles for elders
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 Stage 1: Exposure
 Differential threshold: the ability of a sensory
system to detect changes in or differences
between two stimuli. It’s also called JND(just
noticeable difference).
Turn it Turn on yet? Still can’t Finally!
on! hear.

20 decibel 21 decibel 22 decibel 23 decibel

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Stage 1: Exposure

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 Stage 1: Exposure
 Company may not want consumers aware all actions
 Raise the price, reduce size of a package
 On sale event

 Weber’s Law: The stronger the initial stimulus, the

greater a change in the stimulus must be for us to
notice it.
 In Coldplay concert VS in a library
 Discount: $600$540 VS $2000$1940

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 Stage 1: Exposure
• Subliminal perception: a stimulus below the
level of the consumer’s awareness.
• How to reach consumers’ subliminal
perception?
 Embeds: in movies
Beer
Beer

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 Stage 2: Attention
• Attention is the extent to which processing
activity is devoted to a particular stimulus
• Sensory overload: consumers are exposed to far
more information than they can process.
• Marketers need to break through the clutter.
 The process of perceptual selection means that
people attend to only a small portion of the stimuli to
which they are exposed.

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 How Do Marketers Get
Attention?
1. Personal selection factors:
• Experience, what kind of information you used to
acquire and process
• Perceptual filters
 Perceptual vigilance: consumers are more likely
to be aware of stimuli that relate to their current
needs.
 On a diet VS Gain weight
 Go to wedding VS go to interview
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 How Do Marketers Get
Attention?
• Perceptual filters
 Perceptual defense: people see what they want to
see—and don’t see what they don’t want to see.
 marketers will use some novel, surprised way to
arouse consumers’ attention.
 Push Notification, novel promotion

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 How Do Marketers Get
Attention?
• Perceptual filters
 Perceptual adaptation: 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.

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 How Do Marketers Get
Attention?
2. Stimulus Selection Factors
• Size: contrast to the competition helps to
determine if it will command attention
• Color: to draw attention to a product or to give it
a distinct identity.

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 How Do Marketers Get
Attention?
2. Stimulus Selection Factors
• Position: places where we’re
more likely to look.
• Novelty: appear in unexpected
ways or places tend to grab our
attention.
 Burger King

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 Step 3. Interpretation
• Interpretation refers to the meaning we assign
to sensory stimuli, which is based on a schema
• Stimulus Organization: The Gestalt
perspective provides several principles that
relate to the way our brains organize stimuli:
 closure principle
 similarity principle
 figure-ground principle 34
 Step 3. Interpretation
 closure principle: people perceive an
incomplete picture as complete
 Always open _______.
 Just _____ _____.
 It’s finger _____ ______

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 Step 3. Interpretation
 similarity principle: consumers group
together objects that share similar physical
characteristics

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 Step 3. Interpretation
 figure-ground principle: one part of the stimulus
will dominate (the figure) while the other parts
recede into the background (ground)

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 Semiotics
• Semiotics: correspondence between signs and
symbols and their roles in how we assign meaning
• Marketing messages have three basic components:
 Object: the product that is the focus of the message
 Sign: the sensory image that represents the intended
meaning of the object
 Interpretant: the meaning we derive from the sign

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Semiotics

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 Perceptual positioning
• Brand perceptions = functional attributes +
symbolic attributes
• Examples of brand positioning
Lifestyle Grey Poupon is “high class”
Price leadership L’Oreal sells Noisome brand face cream
Attributes Bounty is “quicker picker upper”
Product class The Spyder Eclipse is a sporty convertible
Competitors Northwestern Insurance is the quiet company
Occasions Use Wrigley’s gum when you can’t smoke
Users Levi’s Dockers targeted to young men
Quality At Ford, “Quality is Job 1”
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 You should know
• Products and commercial messages often appeal to our
senses, but because of the profusion of these messages
we don’t notice most of them.
• Perception is a three-stage process that translates raw
stimuli into meaning.

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