Week 3

Perception

“Perception is Reality”
Louis Cheskin

2-1
Are The Center Circles the Same Size?

Perception is how we absorb and interpret information

about products and other people from the outside
world.
2-2
Are the Purple Lines Bent or Straight?

Perception is how we absorb and interpret information

about products and other people from the outside
world.
2-3
A Sax Player or a Woman’s Face?

Perception is how
we absorb and
interpret information
about products and
other people from
the outside world.

2-4
Perception
• Perception is a three-
stage process that
translates raw stimuli
into meaning.
”The study of perception is essentially
how we make sense of or assign meaning
to, the raw sensations we experience when
we encounter different stimuli.”
(Solomon, 2015)

2-5
Sensation and Perception
• Sensation is the immediate
response of our sensory
receptors (eyes, ears, nose,
mouth, and fingers) to basic
stimuli (light, color, sound,
odor, and texture).
• Perception is the process by
which sensations are
selected, organized, and
interpreted.
2-6
Our brains receive external stimuli, or
sensory inputs, on a number of channels.
We may see a billboard, hear a jingle, feel the
softness of a cashmere sweater, taste a new flavor of
ice cream, or smell a leather jacket.

These inputs are the raw data that begin the

perceptual process.

Sensory data from the external environment (e.g.,

hearing a tune on the radio) can generate internal
sensory experiences; a song might trigger a young
man’s memory of his first dance and bring to mind the
smell of his date’s perfume or the feel of her hair on
his cheek.
2-7
Perceptual Process

the immediate response of our sensory receptors

Sensation

Meaning

We receive external Perception

stimuli through our five
senses

2-8
When a consumer comes into contact with
different marketing stimuli
- for example, a bus stop advertisement, or the aroma of freshly
baked bread from a nearby bakery, or a radio commercial - one
or more of their five senses are activated. Their brain will start to
process these raw sensations and try to make sense of them.
This is known as the perceptual process and is depicted in the
diagram below.

We are exposed up to 10,000 brand messages a day

We then interpret those stimuli to which we paid attention.

We perceive, understand and behave accordingly.

2-9
The design
• The design of a product is
now a key driver of its
success or failure - our
brains are wired to
appreciate good design
• The sensory experiences we
receive from products and
services play an increasingly
key role when we choose
among competing options.

The Coca-Cola bottle also illustrates an

example of how design can facilitate
2-10
product success.
The design
• Hedonic consumption
includes how consumers
interact with the emotional
aspects of products. In other
words, products are rarely
strictly functional.
• Consumers may want
hedonic value too. Target is
a company that has
embraced this insight.
The Jean Paul Gaultier parfume
Target focuses on products bottle also illustrates an example of
with great design as well as how design can facilitate product
functionality. success.

2-11
2-12
Our sensations affect our product
experiences
• Products and commercial messages often appeal
to our senses, but because of the profusion of
these messages, most won’t influence us.

2-13
Our sensations affect our product
experiences
• 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.

2-14
Sensory Systems - It all starts with our
senses

• Vision
• Scent
• Sound
• Touch
• Taste

2-15
Sensory Marketing
• The use of these various sensory cues to
stimulate interest and influence behaviour is
known as Sensory Marketing.
• Dates back to the late 1970s
• Aim is to engage with consumers using a
range of sensory triggers (not just
sight/visuals) to make their promotional efforts
more effective.
• May provide a strong competitive advantage
for the brand’s product or service.
2-16
Sensory Marketing
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.

2-17
Sensory Marketing
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.
For example, retail store owners found that by introducing a pine
fragrance into their stores, it subconsciously encouraged people to
buy more and thus increased their sales

Stores and restaurants often play certain kinds of music to create a

certain mood.

When you have an issue with a brand’s product and you call their
customer service hotline, have you noticed that most of them tend to
play music while they put you on hold?
2-18
Sensory Marketing
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.

2-19
Sensory Marketing Examples
Coca-Cola’s Color Red and Dynamic Ads:
Coca-Cola uses the color red, which is associated with
excitement and energy, to evoke a sense of happiness and
thirst. Their ads often use bright, vibrant visuals, and iconic
packaging to attract attention and reinforce the brand.

2-20
Sensory Marketing Examples
Apple’s Sleek Product Design:
Apple’s advertising emphasizes the aesthetic
beauty of its products, showcasing their sleek
design with clean, minimal visuals. The visual
appeal is meant to make customers desire the
tactile experience of interacting with the product.

2-21
 Sensory Marketing Examples * SOUND
https://youtu.be/QymLzVtbsBo

https://youtu.be/-nB59EVmizo

The bottle opening, bottle cap noise, ice cubes clicking, the
sound of pouring, fizzing, then “ahh” of satisfaction….
Coco-Cola is doing more than just selling a soft drink—it’s selling
an experience.
In using the soundscape to help support that, the brand was
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=m_QzW3zXml4
able to broach cultural and language barriers and thereby reach &feature=youtu.be
consumers all around the world.
2-22
Perceptual Process

the immediate response of our sensory receptors

Sensation

Meaning

We receive external Perception

stimuli through our five
senses

2-23
Exposure
• Exposure occurs when we first come into
contact with a particular stimulus
• Because of the vast number of different stimuli
we are exposed to on a daily basis, we can
sometimes be oblivious to something, even if it
is right in front of us.

2-24
Exposure
• Exposure occurs when a stimulus comes within the
range of someone’s sensory receptors. Consumers
concentrate on some stimuli, but are unaware of others.
• There are some stimuli we simply cannot perceive.
• Psychophysics is the science that explains how the
physical environment is integrated into our personal,
subjective world.
• When we define the lowest intensity of a stimulus that
our brains can register we are speaking of its threshold.
The images in the slide illustrate how Pepsi has changed
its logo over the years. If the difference didn’t pass our
sensory threshold, we wouldn’t notice the logo had
changed. 2-25
Sensory Threshold

• The sensory threshold is the point at

which, “the advertising message is strong
enough to make a conscious impact to the
consumer’s awareness.”
(Solomon, 2015)

2-26
Sensory Thresholds
• The absolute threshold refers to the minimum amount
of stimulation a person can detect on any given sensory
channel – the second you sense smt, you pass your
absolute threshold.
• Marketers need to understand that the advertising
message or stimuli they create must exceed the
absolute threshold for it to be perceived by the
consumer.
• The differential threshold refers to the ability of a
sensory system to detect changes in or differences
between two stimuli – the moment you can tell the
difference

2-27
Sensory Thresholds

When a brand tries to modernize its logo, it has to walk

a fine line because consumers tend to get tired of old-
fashioned designs BUT they still want to be able to
identify the familiar product.

2-28
Subliminal Perception
• Subliminal advertising is a controversial
but largely ineffective way to talk to
consumers

2-29
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.
• 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. 2-30
2-31
2-32
Perceptual Process

the immediate response of our sensory receptors

Sensation

Meaning

We receive external Perception

stimuli through our five
senses

2-33
Attention
• Attention refers to the extent to which processing activity
is devoted to a particular stimulus.
• We interpret the stimuli to which we do pay attention
according to learned patterns and expectations.

2-34
Attention
• Consumers experience sensory overload: we are
exposed to far more information than we can
process
• Marketers need to break through the clutter

2-35
Attention
• 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.

2-36
How Many Ads Do We See A Day?

It’s widely accepted that the number of ads we see a day is

somewhere between 4,000 and 10,000. However, to reach the upper end
of this range, we’d have to see 625 ads every hour, assuming we spend
eight hours a day sleeping.

2-37
How Many Ads Do We See A Day On
Social Media?
74% of users said there are too many ads on social media.
44% of users find ads they see on social media irrelevant to their needs
and preferences.
Facebook processes over 5 million new ads a day.
44% of marketers selected Facebook as their most important social
media platform.

2-38
The marketing industry is growing annually as
businesses invest increasingly larger portions of their
budget in advertising.
• Global advertising revenue will grow by 7.8% in 2024, reaching nearly $990 billion.
• Google ads revenue for 2023 was $237.86 billion.
• Meta generated over $131.9 billion from ads in 2023.
• YouTube advertising revenue in 2023 was $31.51 billion.
• X (formerly Twitter) made $3.31 billion in advertising revenue in 2023.
• Global advertising spending will reach $974 billion in 2025.
• Global advertising spending will reach $1.17 trillion by 2028.

2-39
Attention

Just how attention stealing is the new ŠKODA Fabia?

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FzJXTdDfpuQ

2-40
How Do Marketers Get Attention?

• Personal Selection Stimulus Selection

• Experience • Stimuli that differs or contrasts is
Perceptual filters (awareness more likely to be noticed
based on past experience)
• SIZE: Larger ad in magazine is
• Perceptual vigilance noticed
(aware of which relates to our current
needs) Is larger always better?
• Perceptual defense • COLOUR: What colours attract?
(we see what we want to see, and ignore
what we don't want to see) • POSITION: What position on shelf,
• Adaptation (when something is what position in magazine?
so familiar)
• BOLD: Headline- does it stand
out; italics; font
• NOVELTY: Is it in an unexpected
place?

2-41
Factors Leading to Adaptation
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.

Intensity
Several factors can lead to adaptation. Less
intense stimuli have less sensory impact.
Discrimination Stimuli that require relatively lengthy exposure in
order to be processed habituate because they
require a long attention span.
Relevance Simple stimuli habituate because they do not
require attention to detail. Frequently
encountered stimuli habituate as the rate of
exposure increases.
Duration
Stimuli that are irrelevant or unimportant
habituate because they fail to attract attention.

Exposure 2-42
Perceptual Process

the immediate response of our sensory receptors

Sensation

Meaning

We receive external Perception

stimuli through our five
senses

2-43
Interpretation
• Interpretation refers to the meaning we assign to sensory
stimuli, which is based on a schema

Toyota, the living room evokes an

image of a car because of the seat
arrangement
2-44
Stimulus Organization
The stimuli we perceive are often ambiguous. It’s up to us to determine
the meaning based on our past experiences, expectations, and needs.
Our brains tend to relate incoming sensations to others already in
memory based on some fundamental organizational principles.

2-45
Stimulus Organization
• 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.
• 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)

2-46
Stimulus 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.

2-47
Application of the
Figure-Ground Principle
The footwear in the foreground is the ‘figure’ or focal point, yet after you
examine the brightly coloured back-’ground’ more closely, you notice the
additional message in text around the shoe.

2-48
 Semiotics
• The field of semiotics
helps us to understand
how marketers use
symbols to create
meaning
• The study of semiotics
is important, because
people no longer
necessarily purchase a
product because of
what it can do,
but because of what it
means to them
2-49
Semiotics
• The campaign sparked a generation of loyal Apple users, who were able
to identify with the symbolism which the brand stood for, and who wanted
to ‘think different’.

2-50
Semiotics: Using a semiotics perspective, every marketing
campaign contains three basic components
•The object – the focus of the message, which is the product
•The sign/symbol – the sensory imagery that is represented
•Interpretant – the meaning that is derived from the sign/symbol

2-51
The three components object, symbol & interpretant?

2-52
How does a marketer determine where a product actually stands
in the minds of consumers?
PERCEPTUAL POSITIONING

• Brand perceptions = functional attributes + symbolic

attributes
• Perceptual map: map of where brands are perceived in
consumers’ minds
• When developing a perceptual map, it is not what YOU
the marketer think about your position in the market
relative to your competitors, but how YOUR
CONSUMERS’ rate your brand and products.
• It is important to survey your customers and understand
the different symbolic and functional attributes they use
to evaluate your brand/products in relation to your
competitors.
2-53
Examples of Brand Positioning
Positioning Strategy Uses Elements of the Marketing Mix to
Influence the Consumer’s Interpretation of It’s Meaning.

Lifestyle

Price leadership
Attributes

Product class

Competitors

Occasions

Users
Quality
2-54
Perceptual Positioning

2-55
Perceptual Positioning

2-56
Perceptual Positioning

2-57
Perceptual Positioning

2-58
Perceptual Positioning

2-59
Chapter Summary
• Perception is a three-stage process that
translates raw stimuli into meaning.
• Products and messages may appeal to
our senses.
• The design of a product affects our
perception of it.
• Subliminal advertising is controversial.
• We interpret stimuli using learned
patterns.
• Marketers use symbols to create meaning.
2-60