Consumer Perception
Perception can be described as “how we see the world around us”. Two
individuals may be subject to the same stimuli under apparently the
same conditions, but how they recognize them, select them, organize
them, and interpret them is a highly individual process based on each
person’s own needs, values, expectations, and the like.
Perception is defined as the process by which an individual selects,
organizes, and interprets stimuli into a meaningful and coherent picture
of the world. A stimulus is any unit of input to any of the senses.
Examples of stimuli (i.e., sensory inputs) include products, packages,
brand names, advertisements, and commercials. Sensory receptors are
the human organs (the eyes, ears, mouth, and skin) that receive sensory
inputs. These sensory functions are to see, hear, smell, taste, and feel.
All of these functions are called into play— either singly or in
combination— in the evaluation and use of most consumer products.
The study of perception is largely the study of what we subconsciously
add to or subtract from raw sensory inputs to produce a private picture
of the world.
Sensation— Sensation is the immediate and direct response of the
sensory organs to simple stimuli (an advertisement, a package, a brand
name). Human sensitivity refers to the experience of sensation.
Sensitivity to stimuli varies with the quality of an individual’s sensory
receptors (e.g., eyesight or hearing) and the amount of intensity of the
stimuli to which he or she is exposed. For example, a blind person may
have a more highly developed sense of hearing than the average sighted
person and may be able to hear sounds that the average person cannot.
Sensation itself depends on energy change or differentiation of input. A
perfectly bland or unchanging environment- regardless of the strength of
the sensory input- provides little or no sensation at all. Thus, a person
who lives on a busy street in midtown Manhattan would probably receive
little or no sensation from the inputs of such noisy stimuli as horns
honking, tires screeching, and fire engines clanging, since such sounds
are so common in New York City. One honking horn more or less would
never be noticed. In situations where there is a great deal of sensory
input, the senses do not detect small intensities or differences in input.
As sensory input decreases, however, our ability to detect changes in
input or intensity increases, to the point that we attain maximum
sensitivity under conditions of minimal stimulation. This accounts for
the statement, “It was so quiet I could hear a pin drop”. It also accounts
for the increased attention given to a commercial that appears alone
during a program break, or to a black-and-white advertisement in a
magazine full of four-color advertisements. This ability of the human
organism to accommodate itself to varying levels of sensitivity as external
conditions vary not only provides more sensitivity when it is needed, but
also serves to protect us from damaging, disruptive, or irrelevant
bombardment when the input level is high.
Perceptual Selection
Consumers subconsciously exercise a great deal of selectivity as to which
aspects of the environment—which stimuli—they perceive. An individual
may look at some things, ignore others, and turn away from still others.
In total, people actually receive- or perceive-only a small fraction of the
stimuli to which they are exposed. Consider, for example, a woman in a
super-market. She is exposed to literally thousands of products of
different colors, sizes, and shapes; to perhaps a hundred people (looking,
walking, searching, talking); to smells (from fruit, from meat, from
disinfectant, from people); to sounds within the store (cash registers
ringing, shopping carts rolling, air conditioners humming, and clerks
sweeping, stocking shelves); and to sounds from outside the store (planes
passing, cars honking, tires screeching, children shouting, car doors
slamming). Yet she manages on a regular basis to visit her local
supermarket, select the items she needs, pay for them, and leaves, all
within a relatively brief time, without losing her sanity or her personal
orientation to the world around her. This is because she exercises
selectivity in perception.
Which stimuli get selected depends on two major factors in addition to
the nature of the stimuli itself: the consumer’s previous experience as it
affects her expectations (what she is prepared, or “set”, to see) and her
motives at the time (her needs, desires, interests, and so on). Each of
these factors can serve to increase or decrease the probability that the
stimulus will be perceived, and each can affect the consumer’s selective
exposure to and selective awareness of the stimulus itself.
Nature of the Stimulus— Marketing stimuli include an enormous
number of variables that affect the consumer’s perception, such as the
nature of the product, its physical attributes, the package design, the
brand name, the advertisements and commercials (including copy
claims, choice and sex of model, positioning of model, size of ad, and
typography), the position of the ad or time of the commercial, and the
editorial environment.
Expectations— People usually see what they expect to see, and what
they expect to see is usually based on familiarity, previous experience, or
preconditioned” set”.
In a marketing context, people tend to perceive products and product
attributes according to their own expectations. A man who has been told
by his friends that a new brand of Scotch has a bitter taste will probably
perceive the taste to be bitter; a teenager who attends a horror movie
that has been billed as terrifying will probably find it so.
Motives— People tend to perceive things they need or want; the stronger
the need, the greater the tendency to ignore unrelated stimuli in the
environment. A businessman concerned with fitness and health is more
likely to notice and to read carefully an ad for a health club than one who
is without such concerns. In general, there is a heightened awareness of
stimuli that are relevant to one’s needs and interests, and a decreased
awareness of stimuli that are irrelevant to those needs.
Related Concepts— As the preceding discussion illustrates, the
consumer’s “selection” of stimuli from the environment is based on the
interaction of expectations and motives with the stimulus itself. These
factors give rise to a number of important concepts concerning
perception.
Selective Exposure— Consumers actively seek out messages they find
pleasant or with which they are sympathetic, and actively avoid painful
or threatening ones. Thus, heavy smokers avoid articles that link
cigarette smoking to cancer and note (and quote) the relatively few that
deny the relationship. Consumers also selectively expose themselves to
advertisements that reassure them of the wisdom of their purchase
decisions.
Selective Attention— Consumers have a heightened awareness of the
stimuli that meet their needs or interests and a lesser awareness of
stimuli irrelevant to their needs. Thus, they are likely to note ads for
products that meet their needs or for stores with which they are familiar
and disregard those in which they have no interest.
People also vary in terms of the kind of information in which they are
interested and the form of message and type of medium they prefer.
Some people are more interested in price, some in appearance, and some
in social acceptability. Some people like complex, sophisticated
messages; others like simple graphics. Consumers therefore exercise a
great deal of selectivity in terms of the attention they give to commercial
stimuli.
Perceptual Defense— Consumers subconsciously screen out stimuli
that are important for them not to see, even though exposure has already
taken place. Thus, threatening or otherwise damaging stimuli are less
likely to be perceived than are neutral stimuli at the same level of
exposure. Further more, individuals may distort information that is not
consistent with their needs, values, and beliefs.
Perceptual Blocking— Consumers protect themselves from being
bombarded with stimuli by simply “tuning out”— blocking such stimuli
from conscious awareness. Research shows that enormous amounts of
advertising are screened out by consumers; this may be more common
for television than for print. To explain why television advertising recall
scores are falling, various hypotheses have been offered, such as the
greater amount of time allotted for commercials, the use of shorter
commercials (and thus more advertising messages within the same
period of time), the number of commercials that are strung together back
to back, the increased number of advertisers, and the greater number of
products being advertised.