Lecture 4 - Perception Testing

For today's lesson we were asked to create a perception test. Francine and myself decided to do a taste test. This involved picking three different types of chocolate so that the class could taste them and decided which one they liked the most. We removed the packaging to make sure that the brand didn't influence their decision. The chocolate we chose was: Tesco value, Tesco (mid-priced), and Tesco finest. We placed each chocolate (broken up) on separate pieces of paper named chocolate 1,2 and 3. Eleven people volunteered to do our test and the results were as followed: value = 2, mid-priced = 4, and finest= 5. We then told the class what chocolate was on each piece of paper and they were surprised that the difference between them all wasn't bigger. If I was to do this test again I would give each person participating a glass of water, so that they can get the true taste of the chocolate without tasting like their all the same.

The next experiment shown was testing to see if people knew the difference between: coke, pepsi, and pepsi max. Not many people offered to participate in this experiment, but all the people who did, instantly knew the difference between them all. This may be because they are popular brands that people drink regularly, therefore they would not be hard to differentiate. An alteration that could made to this would be to change the products so that it tests coke against a similar supermarket branded item.

The third experiment only tested two products, these were McVities digestives and Tesco's own branded digestives. Obviously most people preferred Mcvities, I believe this may be because they were brand influenced due to the brand stamp been stamped on the biscuit.

Finally; the last test looked at three different types of cookies. Just like most other groups they used: Tesco value, Tesco (mid-priced), and maryland - a branded product. They also put the cookies on separate pieces of paper so no-one would be biased towards a particular brand. The results shown that most people preferred the Tesco (mid-priced) cookie due to the flavour. Overall this was a sound experiment as they didn't give away which cookie was which, however to make the experiment more reliable than they would need more participants.

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'.

Lecture 2 - Perception

Perception is defined as "the process of sensing, selecting, and interpreting consumer stimuli in the external world" (Wilkie, R 1994). This is a good stepping stone in understanding how different people perceive different things. Kotler's model of buyer behaviour is a perfect example of this definition. He believes that the marketing stimuli consisting of: product, price, place and promotion and other stimuli both lead to the buyer's black box. From this buyer's responses are then collected.

Next we were shown an advert on how different views can portray a different outcome. In this advert a man is running down the street, and is stopped from three separate angles. Each angle shows a different view to the story from each persons point of view.



As you can see this advert is set in black and white, this is a clear juxtaposition to our everyday colour TV. It is set in black and white to capture the audience's attention, as well as having no background music or dialogue other than the main vocal points. In my opinion this is a brilliant advert as it is differentiated in the current advert market and really stands out from the crowd, showing exactly what it originally intended to.

This is the NLP Communication Model. It explains how we use and process information, and how it affects our behaviour through our five senses: touch, taste, smell, sight, and hear.
We were told today that we take in two million pieces of information at any one time. This seems like such a lot considering our conscious mind can only process seven bits of information as stated by Designed Thinking (1998 - 2007). As this is happening we then take into account images, sounds and feeling from around us, enabling us to identify the information we need and block out the pieces we don't. For example, when sitting in a class room you are aware there is a sound coming from the fan but after a while subconsciously ignore it as it as the information is not important.

This can then be followed on through onto The Howard and Sheth Theory of Buyer Behaviour. It explores individual decision making and encourages repeat buying from the customer. The main part of the model is the perceptual reaction stage as this includes the filtering of information. This is how a potential customer intakes information from marketing and advertisement such a adverts - it is what makes the customer want to buy the product and remember the brand name. For more information [click here]

Adverts also appeal to the five different senses just as the NLP Communication Model has already shown. They use clever imagery and colours to advertise their product. For example cool colours such as green represents a soothing and relaxing environment. However; colours such as red represent excitement and energy. By combining both colours and senses it gives the customer a better idea of what the product is like. For example this advert (to the right) is directly aimed at women and by having a rose, it symbolises the smell of the perfume, this is then emphasised by the fact that she is smelling the perfume bottle.

Finally; we were allocated into random groups of 5/6 and was given a sheet of paper with paint samples on it. We were asked to name the paints to appeal to our given target market. Each group was given a different target market. The target markets were:

• Young Children
• Young Urban Professionals
• Wealthy Retired People

Our group was given Young Urban Professionals along with pictures to represent that group. Surprisingly I found this group was hard to name paints after, even though they are the closest to my age group. As we already perceive paints to be colours that we have already learnt in previous years it was rather hard to try and change those or perceive them to be something different. We soon realised that an individual colour's name would change dramatically depending on the given target market. For example pink would be changed to look more appetising by being re-named Rose pink OR power puff pink. In conclusion, most paint names are aimed at women as it tends to be a women's job to choose the paint and needs to appeal to them the most.

Lecture 1 - First Impressions

It is said that "you never get a second chance to make a first impression". Today we were told that it only takes up to as little as 17 seconds for someone to make their first impression on another. In my opinion people are usually judged through four main attributes: character, visual perception, mannerisms and most importantly their body language.

At the beginning of the lesson Ruth asked the class to draw an individual shape on a piece of paper, big enough so that we could write our responses in from her questions. All the questions were fairly basic and were asking us to describe the main focal points of our life and a little bit about us as people. For example one of the first questions was “how many brothers and sisters do you have?”. Everyone had the option to either write their response down or to draw it as a picture; I drew a picture of two boys and three girls to indicate my answer. Once the class had answered the questions Ruth collected everyone’s paper in and handed them out to random people making sure we didn’t get our own one back. The idea of this activity was for whoever received the piece of paper to write down what ‘kind of person’ they thought we were and with these thoughts hand the piece of paper back to who they best suited (even though we didn’t really know one another). As my star was handed instantly to me the words wrote on the back were “she’s: confident, funny, outgoing and sporty”. This seemed like a perfect observation of my persona. It seems somewhat surreal, that we as people can be instantly identified by a few words or pictures on a piece of paper. [Add Picture of my Star]

Our next activity involved judging two random students on their appearance; they were not allowed to talk to us as we had to judge them solely on their looks. At first it seemed unfair to stereotype someone especially as we hadn't met them before or didn’t know them, but it was all part of the activity. As both the participants walked into the room, everyone was to write down their initial thoughts on a piece of paper on each person. Instantly I perceived participant A to be: a student, have a big personality (because of her bright clothing), into rock music and be fairly confident. On the other hand participant B seemed to be: a student, foreign, shy, reserved and really into fashion. After about five minutes everyone had gathered their thoughts and was ready for a group discussion. Surprisingly most of the class had the same thoughts as I had, in distinguishing the fact that both of the students were defiantly of another nationality. It's strange how our visual perceptions of both participant A and B was practically spot on as they were exactly as we had all described them.