Chapter 2

Perception
By Michael R. Solomon

Consumer Behavior
Buying, Having, and Being
Sixth Edition
2-1
 Sensation and Perception
• Sensation:
– The immediate response of our sensory receptors (eyes,
ears, nose, mouth, fingers) to basic stimuli such as light,
color, sound, odors, and textures
• Perception:
– The process by which sensations are selected, organized,
and interpreted
• The Study of Perception:
– Focuses on what we add to raw sensations to give them
meaning

2-2
An Overview of the
Perception Process

Figure 2.1 2-3

 Sensory Systems
• External stimuli, or sensory inputs, can
be received on a number of different
channels.
• Inputs picked up by our five senses are
the raw data that begin the perceptual
process.
• Hedonic Consumption:
– The multisensory, fantasy, and emotional aspects
of consumers’ interactions with products
2-4
Advertisements Appeal to Our Sensory Systems

• This ad for a luxury car emphasizes the contribution made by

all of our senses to the evaluation of a driving experience.
2-5
 Sensory Systems - Vision
• Marketers rely heavily on visual
elements in advertising, store design,
and packaging.
• Meanings are communicated on the
visual channel through a product’s
color, size, and styling.
• Colors may influence our emotions
more directly.
– Arousal and stimulated appetite (e.g. red)
– Relaxation (e.g. blue)
2-6
 Sensory Perceptions - Vision
• Some reactions to color come from
learned associations.
– (e.g. Black is associated with mourning in the
United States, whereas white is associated with
mourning in Japan.)
• Some reactions to color are due to
biological and cultural differences.
– (e.g. Women tend to be drawn to brighter tones
and are more sensitive to subtle shadings and
patterns)

2-7
 Sensory Perceptions - Vision
• Color plays a dominant role in Web page
design.
• Saturated colors (green, yellow, orange, and
cyan) are considered the best to capture
attention.
– Don’t overdo it. Extensive use of saturated colors can
overwhelm people and cause visual fatigue.
• Trade Dress:
– Colors that are strongly associated with a corporation, for
which the company may have exclusive rights for their use.
• (e.g. Kodak’s use of yellow, black, and red)

2-8
 Discussion Question
• First Heinz gave us
“Blastin’ Green” ketchup
in a squeeze bottle. Now
they have introduced
“Funky Purple” ketchup.
• What sensory perception
is Heinz trying to appeal
to? Do you think this
product will be
successful? Why or why
not?

2-9
VIDEO: Snapple
• Snapple drinks were
revived by the
Whipper Snapple
product, thanks to
consumers forming
their own perceptions
about the product.
Click image to play video

2 - 10
 Sensory Perceptions - Smell
• Odors can stir emotions or create a calming
feeling.
• Some responses to scents result from early
associations that call up good or bad feelings.
• Marketers are finding ways to use smell:
– Scented clothes
– Scented stores
– Scented cars and planes
– Scented household products
– Scented advertisements

2 - 11
 Sensory Perceptions - Sound
• Advertising jingles create brand awareness.
• Background music creates desired moods.
• Sound affects people’s feelings and behaviors.
• Muzak uses a system it calls “stimulus
progression” to increase the normally slower
tempo of workers during midmorning and
midafternoon time slots.
• Sound engineering:
– Top-end automakers are using focus groups of consumers to
help designers choose appropriate sounds to elicit the proper
response.

2 - 12
Stimulus Progression

2 - 13
 Sensory Perceptions - Touch
• Relatively little research has been done on
the effects of tactile stimulation on the
consumer, but common observation tells
us that this sensory channel is important.
• People associate textures of fabrics and
other surfaces with product quality.
• Perceived richness or quality of the
material in clothing is linked to its “feel,”
whether rough or smooth.
2 - 14
 Applications of Touch Perceptions
• Kansai engineering: A
philosophy that
translates customers’
feelings into design
elements.
• Mazda Miata designers
discovered that making
the stick shift (shown
on the right) exactly 9.5
cm long conveys the
optimal feeling of
sportiness and control.

2 - 15
 Tactile Quality Associations
Tactile Oppositions in Fabrics

Perception Male Female

High class Wool Silk Fine

Low class Denim Cotton

Heavy Light Coarse

Table 2.1 2 - 16
 Sensory Perceptions - Taste
• Taste receptors contribute to our
experience of many products.
• Specialized companies called “flavor
houses” are constantly developing new
concoctions to please the changing
palates of consumers.
• Changes in culture also determine the
tastes we find desirable.

2 - 17
• Human sensitivity refers to the
experience of sensation.
– Sensitivity to stimuli varies with the quality of an
individual’s sensory receptors and the amount or
intensity of the stimuli to which he/she is exposed.
– Sensation itself depends on energy change, or the
difference of input.
– Thus, a constant environment, whether very busy
and noisy or relatively quiet, would provide little
sensation because of the lack of change—the
consistent level of stimulation.

2 - 18
 Exposure
• Exposure:
– Occurs when a stimulus comes within the range of
someone’s sensory receptors
• Consumers concentrate on some
stimuli, are unaware of others, and
even go out of their way to ignore some
messages.

2 - 19
• As sensory input decreases, the ability
to detect changes increases.
– This ability of the human organism to
accommodate itself to varying levels of sensitivity
as external conditions vary not only protects us
from damaging, disruptive, or irrelevant
bombardment when the input level is high, but has
important implications for marketers.

2 - 20
 Sensory Thresholds
• Psychophysics:
– The science that focuses on how the physical environment
is integrated into our personal subjective world.
• Absolute Threshold:
– The minimum amount of stimulation that can be detected
on a given sensory channel.
• Differential Threshold:
– The ability of a sensory system to detect changes or
differences between two stimuli. The minimum difference
that can be detected between two stimuli is known as the
j.n.d. (just noticeable difference).

2 - 21
 Weber’s Law
• Weber’s law states that the stronger the
initial stimulus, the greater the
additional intensity needed for the
second stimulus to be perceived as
different.
• Weber’s law holds for all senses and almost all levels
of intensity.

2 - 22
 Weber’s Law
• The amount of change that is necessary to be noticed is
systematically related to the intensity of the original
stimulus
• The stronger the initial stimulus, the greater a change
must be for it to be noticed.
Marketing Applications of the J.N.D.
•  Manufacturers and marketers endeavor to determine
the relevant j.n.d. for their products so that: product
improvements are readily discernible to the consumer
without being wastefully extravagant.

2 - 23
• Marketers use the j.n.d. to determine
the amount of improvement they
should make in their product.
– Less than the j.n.d. is wasted effort because the
improvement will not be perceived.
– More than the j.n.d. is wasteful because it
reduces the level of repeat sales.

2 - 24
 Subliminal Perception
• Subliminal perception:
– Occurs when the stimulus is below the level of the consumer’s
awareness. People are also stimulated below their level of
conscious awareness—they can perceive stimuli without being
consciously aware of it.
• Subliminal techniques:
– Embeds: Tiny figures that are inserted into magazine:
advertising by using high-speed photography or airbrushing.
• Does subliminal perception work?
– There is little evidence that subliminal stimuli can bring about
desired behavioral changes.

2 - 25
 Dynamics of Perception
• Perception is not a function of sensory
input alone; rather, perception is the
result of two different kinds of inputs
that interact to form the personal
pictures—the perceptions—that each
individual experiences.
– Physical stimuli from the outside environment and
internal stimuli based on expectations, motives,
and learning are based on previous experiences.

2 - 26
 Attention
• Attention:
– The extent to which processing activity is devoted
to a particular stimulus.
• Attention economy:
– The Internet has transformed the focus of
marketers from attracting dollars to attracting
eyeballs.
• Perceptual selection:
– People attend to only a small portion of the stimuli
to which they are exposed.

2 - 27
 Perceptual selection
• There are three aspects to perception—
selection, organization, and
interpretation of stimuli.
• Consumers subconsciously exercise
selectivity as to the stimuli they
perceive.

2 - 28
• Which stimuli get selected depends on
two major factors in addition to the
nature of the stimulus itself:
– Consumers’ previous experience as it affects their
expectations.
– Their motives at the time (their needs, desires,
interests, and so on).
– NATURE OF THE STIMULUS
– EXPECTATIONS
– MOTIVES
– SELECTIVE PERCEPTION

2 - 29
• SELECTIVE EXPOSURE
• SELECTIVE ATTENTION
• PERCEPTUAL DEFENSE
• PERCEPTUAL BLOCKING

2 - 30
 Attention and Advertising

• Nike tries to cut through the clutter by spotlighting

maimed athletes instead of handsome models.
2 - 31
 Personal Selection Factors
• Experience:
– The result of acquiring and processing stimulation over
time
• Perceptual vigilance:
– Consumers are aware of stimuli that relate to their current
needs
• Perceptual defense:
– People see what they want to see - and don’t see what they
don’t want to see
• Adaptation:
– The degree to which consumers continue to notice a
stimulus over time
2 - 32
 Factors that Lead to Adaptation
• Intensity: Less-intense stimuli habituate because they have
less sensory impact.
• Duration: Stimuli that require relatively lengthy exposure in
order to be processed tend to habituate because they require a
long attention span.
• Discrimination: Simple stimuli tend to habituate because
they do not require attention to detail.
• Exposure: Frequently encountered stimuli tend to habituate
as the rate of exposure increases.
• Relevance: Stimuli that are irrelevant or unimportant will
habituate because they fail to attract attention.

2 - 33
 Stimulus Selection Factors
• Size:
– The size of the stimulus itself in contrast to the competition
helps to determine if it will command attention.
• Color:
– Color is a powerful way to draw attention to a product.
• Position:
– Stimuli that are present in places we’re more likely to look
stand a better chance of being noticed.
• Novelty:
– Stimuli that appear in unexpected ways or places tend to
grab our attention.

2 - 34
 EXPECTATIONS
• People see what they expect to see.
• What they expect to see is usually based
on familiarity, previous experience, or
preconditioned set expectations.
• Stimuli that conflict sharply with
expectations often receive more
attention than those that conform to
expectations.

2 - 35
Discussion Question
• What technique does
this Australian ad rely
on to get your
attention?
• Does the technique
enhance or detract
from the
advertisement of the
actual product?

2 - 36
 Attention to Stimuli
• Interpretation:
– The meaning that we assign sensory stimuli.
• Schema:
– Set of beliefs to which the stimulus is assigned.
• Priming:
– Process by which certain properties of a stimulus
typically will evoke a schema, which leads
consumers to evaluate the stimulus in terms of
other stimulus they have encountered and believe
to be similar.

2 - 37
 Schema-Based Perception

• Advertisers know that consumers will often relate an

ad to preexisting schema in order to make sense of it.
2 - 38
 STIMULUS
ORGANISATION/PERCEPTUAL
ORGANISATION

2 - 40
 Stimulus Organization
• A stimulus will be interpreted based on its
assumed relationship with other events,
sensations, or images.
• Closure Principle:
– People tend to perceive an incomplete picture as complete.
• Principle of Similarity:
– Consumers tend to group together objects that share the
same physical characteristics.
• Figure-ground Principle:
– One part of a stimulus will dominate (the figure) and other
parts will recede into the background (the ground).

2 - 41
 Gestalt Principle

• This Swedish ad relies upon gestalt perceptual principles to insure that

the perceiver organizes a lot of separate images into a familiar image.

2 - 42
 Principle of Closure

• This Land Rover ad illustrates the use of the principle of closure, in which
people participate in the ad by mentally filling in the gaps in the sentence.

2 - 43
 Figure-ground Principle

• This billboard for Wrangler jeans makes creative use of

the figure-ground principle.
2 - 44
 Semiotics: The Symbols Around Us
• Semiotics: Field of study that examines the
correspondence between signs and symbols
and their role in the assignment of meaning.
• A message has 3 components:
– 1) Object: the product that focuses the message
– 2) Sign: the sensory imagery that represents the
intended meanings of the object
– 3) Interpretant: the meaning derived

2 - 45
Semiotic Components

Figure 2.2 2 - 46
 Semiotics (cont.)
• Signs are related to objects in one of
three ways:
– 1) Icon: a sign that resembles the product in some
way
– 2) Index: a sign that is connected to some object
because they share some property
– 3) Symbol: a sign that is related to a product
through conventional or agreed-upon associations
• Hyperreality: The becoming real of what is
initially simulation or “hype”
2 - 47
Office Space and “The Red Stapler”

2 - 48
 Perceptual Positioning
• Positioning Strategy
– A fundamental part of a company’s marketing
efforts as it uses elements of the marketing mix to
influence the consumer’s interpretation of its
meaning.
– Many dimensions can establish a brand’s position
in the marketplace:
• Lifestyle • Competitors
• Price Leadership • Occasions
• Attributes • Users
• Product Class • Quality
2 - 49
 Perceptual Map
• Figure 2.3: HMV
Perceptual Map

2 - 50