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.