Introducing Perception

It is a vital part in marketing to be able to understand your auidences, to be able to look at the consumer buyer characteristics and determine what they are more than likely to buy, or what influences them to buying into products, brands and services, this is what makes marketers successful. In this session of Understanding the Customer we looked into perception and the use of the five senses, taste, touch, smell, sound and sight.

Perception can be referred to as human assumption and the understanding of how things seem to be and not necessarily what they are, it is the way in which we as individuals see and interpret our surroundings using our own previous experiences to give someting meaning and understanding. There are various different definitions as to what perception actually is, I have collected a few different meanings from various different sources below.

'Process by which people translate sensory impressions into coherent and unified view of the world around them. Through necessarily based on incomplete and unverified (or unreliable) information, perception is 'the reality' and guides human behaviour in general.'- This defifination was taken from http://www.businessdictionary.com/

'Pereception represpents the way in which individuals analyse, interpret and make sense of incoming information and is affected by personality, experience and mood.' -This definition has been taken from Dr Frances Brassignton 2007 Essentials of Marketing

'The act or faculty of apprehending by means of the senses or the mind. Psychology. A single unified awareness derived from sensory processes while stimulus is present.'-This defifinition was taken from http://www.dictionary.reference.com/

'The philosphy of perception concerns how mental processes and symbols depend on the world internal and external to the perceiver. Our perceptions of the external world begins with the senses, which lead us to generate empirical concepts representing the world around us, within a mental framework relating new concepts to preexisting ones. Perception leads to a persons view of the world.'-This definition was taken from http://www.wikipedia.com/

As you can see from the defininitions used above they all share two main similarities, 1 that perception stems from a persons' experiences, meaning that however much we as individuals might share some simarilaites in our perceptions they will always differ in one way or another as each individual is unique and unpredictable and 2 that the foundations on which perceptions are formed are through the five senses.

Each individual has their own unique way in how they percieve things for example you could ask two people the same question on a topic such as football and they would see things completely differently if one had never played and had only obtained information through hear say and watching it on the tv compared to the other person who had had alot of experience within the topic.

Once people have gained a basic instinctive of what they percieve to be true it becomes much harder to see things in different perspectives, it becomes harder to see things from a different point of view thus becoming set in our ways, generally catergorising things due to our own assumptions.

Perception can lead us to make wrong decisions and miss out on opportunities if conclusions are reached without any research into a specific area. "We only see what we want to see" Emerson 2003

Another factor that i've picked up on from these definitions goes back to what i had initially said, that the perceptions that we uphold are not always based on the truth. Especially within advertising. As consumers we are constantly being exposed to various different sources of information being told what to believe, how to live etc. Resulting in false expectations to live up to, depending on the individual and their mental mode of the world and state of mind this can have various consiquences. I have found a advertisment clip which emphazies that not everything is as it seems, and to look more closely at things before making decisions.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dAnRQncZ_uk

In class we looked at a number of tv and magazine adverts, which we then dicussed our interpretations of. The ad that I remember the most was the ICAN ad for ovens. Although this advert was really simple and used basic contrast colours and shapes the use of the imagery that that had been used and the way that it tries to appeal to its auidences through the five senses, really made me think about other adverisments and how this was a common thing but I had only just realised it.

The advert used a granitie type block for flooring against the oven and had lilies on the the flooring and in the oven. This gave the sense that the oven was strong and durable whilst at the same time making the viewers think about nice adours from cooking with the use of the lilies. This advert drew on the senses touch taste and smell, I thought it was really interesting how they had done this.

The only way in which marketers can appeal to its auidences is throught using the five senses, I have found some examples of companies that have used this type of method in their marketing advertisments.

Perfume ads tend to use the touch and smell senses to appeal to its auidences. I have found a print advertisement from Echo for a womens fragence.

The colours that are used within this ad are of a pastel contrast which drwas attention to the feminity of the perfume along with the silk on the garment. Also it relates to the flowers that have been used on the garment suggesting that the perfume will smell like this or for the viewers to pick up on the sent of flowers and relate this to their favourite aroma.

Also the choice of materail used for the garment is silk and along with the use of movement in the ad with the hair blowing in shows that the fragrence is of a light, flowing refereshing aroma. As well as the model using what looks like an ice sculpture or crystal shape it suggests that it has a summer aroma or that the perfurme will in fact keep you refeshed through the hot summer days.

Most perfume ads tend to follow this same method when advertising their products as its brings attention to the senses of smell and touch and enables its auidences to afiliate these sensations with good perceptual meanings and plus so far this method has proved to be successful.

With adverts for denim and jeans etc they tend to appeal to more senses to try and get the viewers to think more about the product as it is more simple. I have found a print advert by Levi's jeans.

I personally feel that the ad tries to appeal more to the senses; sight, sound, and touch. The colours used in the ad gives it a not a dreary contrast as such but the colours used are more masculine and mysterious to an extent.

The background imagery is of a city vibe with the model holding on to scaffholding. With water and boats. The whole image portrays movement the viewer is constantly looking arounding trying to make sense of the ad.

The ad I think shows that the jeans are comfortable in any seranrio, they can be worn by the adventouros man, the ad not so much exploits the sense touch with the model actually making contact with the jeans but more so with his surroundings but still appealing to this sense.

These are just a couple of examples which show how marketers can use the five senses through advertising to try and appeal to their auidences. After we had looked at the different adverts we then went on to take part in a 'Paint' exercise.

This was to look at perception when looking at different target auidences, and selling them differnt coloured paints. We were put into three diferent groups; the under 8's, young professionals / graduates and the over 50's. We were then given a list of different coloured paints which we had to rename in coherance to our targeted auidences.

My group had the over 50s which we found quite difficult as we had to maintain the interest of the individuals be inventive but still appealing showing maturity but not being borring. Finally we had to give our groups brand names, in my group we decided not to have a brand name as we felt that the over 50s were more interested in the product itself and unlike the other age groups the purchase decisions that they made were not influenctial by brand perception.

The purpose of this activity was to see how we percieve ceratin auidences to be, this proved that however correct we might be sometimes we do get this wrong and when looking at it from an advertsing point of view if your wrong in the way that you are trying to appeal to your target audience then you would have failed in engaging your audience hence why it is so important for marketers to understand their consumers.

Customer Psychology

This afternoon, I had my very first lecture in Understanding the Customer which I found really interesting. I have always been intrigued by psychology and wanted to learn about and understand all the different factors which determines a persons behavior and how they think.

Understanding the Customer gives an insight on the behavioural aspects of consumers which inturn helps marketers, execute the appropiate means in engaging their auidences. It is a vital part of marketing to understand customer psychology as it plays a huge role on the whole buying process. To understand your consumer means that you can create products that meeets the needs of your chosen demographics or create a desire of want that wasn't initially there.

In the first session of understanding the customer we looked briefly into perception; how people percieve things and the importance of the use of colours and imagery, and how this can effectively influences or initial thoughts and perceptions of what we see and understand.

Perception plays a huge part in customer psychology, how we percieve things is based on the the knowledge that we have gained via previous experiences for example when looking at first impressions we are judging and categorizing people on the basis of what they look like, how they dress, how they talk and even the way in which they enter a room.

We look at these characteristics and make a judgement on what we believe to be true by the knowledge that we have gained from other people who share similar characteristics and our assumptions of what we feel these people to be like. In society we are continuosly judging on our own perceptions good or bad whether we are consciously aware of it or not.

In all honesty I didn't think that I was a judgemental person at all but if you really think about it everyday we make assumptions however large or small, generally it takes no more than 12 seconds for us to make a judgement on a persons' personality and idologies.This session of Understanding the Customer was to get us into the habbit of analysing and explaining why we as consumers make these snap decisions.

The most interesting part of this lecture was when we completed the 'Egg' test which gave us an insight into the way in which others percieve us. This entailed each person drawing any shape of their choice on a balnk piece of paper, then writing or drawing the different points that relate to our everyday lives and personality such as favourite colour, favourite film, worst fear, religion, favourite acholocic drink etc.

The way in which someone expressed their answers through either text or images gave an insight into their personality for example if someone who had a phobia of snakes drew a picture of an large snake you may percieve this person to be of an extrovert nature however if this person had written snake in small inline text you may percieve this person to be a lot more shy and reserved.

This test effectively portrayed certain aspects of our personalities to a certain extent however although the results may have shown someone to be shy and reserved this person may argue that they are alot more out going but once they get to know you. This just certifies the old saying "don't judge a book by its cover".

Another form of how we percieve things is through colour association, this can have a huge impact on the way that we see and interpret things for example the colour red is most commonly associated with danger, passion, evil and lust thus almost immediately creating meaning for something.

Another activity that we took part in in class was with the comparison of two book covers, that had used different images and colours to portray the same title and author. Without knowing the names of the books and solely just by viewing the ways in which the colours and images had been used we were able to interpret the two books in completely different ways. This is an example of how influencial the use of colours and imagery are in customer psychology.