Lecture 3 - Perception & Decision Making Process

Today's lecture was all about perception and the process we go through when making a decision. We were asked to make a word picture of that we perceived an over 50year old to be like. Ours consisted of words and phrases such as: receding hair line, listens to Queen, family man and traditional - likes a Sunday roast every week. Whereas other groups included words such as: moody, deaf and stuck up. This is bizarre how just our class perceived over 50's in so many different ways. Surprisingly we were then told that researchers put ages 50-106 in the same category as one set target market. But this raises the question - how can you categorise them as one target market when everyone has different views? [ADD PICTURE OF WORD PICTURE]

Kotler's buyer decision process is the main model in assessing the stages that customers must pass through before they make their purchase. However the model only works when its a first time of buying a certain product, otherwise the customer may miss stages or do them in reverse.

The process begins with the need of recognition. For example a man realising that he is hungry and he needs to eat. This is then followed through to the information research stage. Now the man knows he is hungry he needs to decide where to eat, this could include searching for local restaurants/fast food places or supermarkets. As he goes to Tesco he will evaluate what he wants buy choosing different products and basing a decision on factors such as price or value for money - this is the third stage which is the evaluation of alternatives. Once he has made his decision then he would purchase the product. As you can see, the reason this model will only work when its your first time buying is because most people will then automatically know what they want and where to get it, therefore missing out the decision making process.

Customers will also take into account whether the purchase will be of a high or low involvement to the customer. A high involvement purchase is when more time and effort needs to go into evaluating the product due to its high purchase price (for example buying a laptop or a car). Whereas; a low involvement purchase is when the customer doesn't have to make a detailed evaluation on the product (for example buying simple things such as a pen or a pencil).

Both the Harvard Perceived risk model and Laurent & Kapferer (1985) they argue that a consumer's level of involvement will be affected by four components.
1. Importance and Risks (FTPEPS):
Finance, time, performance, ego, physical, and social.

Next we were asked to complete a task, this involved using the FTPEPS and to consider the likely level of involvement of both a 21 year old and a 46 year old for: buying a car, buying a mobile phone, and finally buying underwear for their partner. As you would think the FTPEPS change from each different age group. When discussing it most people had the same views but not when it came to buying underwear for your partner as the boys thought that involvement would be low for all the FTPEPS, whereas the girls tended to strongly disagree.

A advertiser uses selective attention and stimulus to attract a customer. These consist of: contrasts, movement, repetition, subliminal messages and size. This is clearly demonstrated in the Wonderbra advert. The original advert was put on the side of a building to attract as many people as possible, but was banned due to the amount of crashes that happened within a couple of weeks. It applies to size because of the size the advert was and as it focuses mainly on the 'assets' on the foreground of the advert. These are put on the foreground so that it is the main focus of the advert. Wonderbra still use the same techniques, as shown in the picture below.



We were then told about the perceptual set, this is "an individual's predisposition to respond to particular events in a particular manner. A perceptual set is also known as a mental set" (Buchanan & Huczynski, Organisational Behaviour 1997). A perceptual set can prevent us from problem solving as it focuses mainly on the mind. From a companies point of view this is a big disadvantage because in theory a new customer would not give their product a chance as they are already 'set in their ways'.