PERCEPTION AND REALITY

We are often told ‘Perception is Reality’ meaning how people perceive the world around them shapes their reality. However Perception and Reality are distinct concepts.

In consumer behaviour, the consumer’s awareness and interpretation of reality is Subjective Reality whereas what actually exists in the environment is Objective Reality.

(IS IT ONE AND THE SAME???? IS THERE SUCH A THING CALLED OBJECTIVE REALITY?)

PROCESS OF PERCEPTION

GESTALT PSYCHOLOGY is a popular psychological theory that helps explain ideas of perception and reality. It is a theory of mind which suggests that the mind self-organises the whole simultaneously along with the individual parts. Often known as ‘the whole is greater than the sum of its parts’ which is not entirely correct. A closer interpretation would be ‘the whole is different from the sum of its parts’.

Phases of the Process of Perception:

• Sensing
• Organizing
• Reacting

SENSING PERCEPTION

• Sensing – Immediate response to stimuli
• Perceiving through Vision:
  • Size – shape – font – logo – colour – physiological responses – packaging – images – positioning
• Perceiving through Hearing:
  • Sonic Identity – sound symbolism – accents – voices – sounds – tone – pitch
• Perceiving through Taste
• Perceiving through Touch
• Perceiving through Smell:
  • Product trials – physiological responses and moods – liking – buying – atmospheric ambience
• How do consumers perceive stimuli?
  • Figure and Ground
  • Closure
  • Grouping
  • Bias for the Whole

The principles of Gestalt Psychology are often prominently applied in branding and packaging design, logos, symbols etc.

SENSORY MARKETING

The use and manipulation of the human senses to influence consumer perceptions and responses to advertising has led to the development of the field of Sensory Marketing, a scientific field based on the principles of psychology.

ORGANISING PERCEPTION

Perceptual or Cognitive Organisation – the process by which stimuli, which are a complex combination of numerous simple stimuli, are organised into a unified whole (OR) the process by which the human brain assembles sensory evidence into something recognizable. It helps in developing interpretation and comprehension.

How do consumers go about organising perception and negotiating stimuli?

• ASSIMILATION: when a stimulus has characteristics such that consumers readily recognise it as belonging to some specific category
• ACCOMMODATION: when a stimulus shares some but not all of the characteristics that would lead it to fit neatly into an existing category and consumers must process exceptions to rules about the category
• CONTRAST: when a stimulus does not share enough in common with existing categories to allow categorisation

REACTING TO PERCEPTION

Perception process ends with a reaction. Its application in consumer behaviour is through cues – such as anthropomorphism – giving humanlike characteristics to inanimate objects.

SELECTIVE PERCEPTION

Not all attempts at influencing perception are successful. Despite best efforts sometimes the end result can only be Selective Perception which can be due to the result of shortcomings in any of the processes of Exposure, Attention or Distortion.

• Selective Exposure: process of screening out most stimuli and exposing oneself only to a small portion of stimuli (e.g. deliberate blocking of ads)
• Selective Attention: process of paying attention to only certain stimuli
  • CLUTTER: marketing environment where consumers are bombarded with too much information
• Selective Distortion: process by which consumers interpret information in ways that are biased by their previously held beliefs

PERCEPTUAL MAPPING

Perceptual Mapping is a marketing technique often used in market segmentation, targeting, and positioning which helps marketers to ‘plot’ a ‘perceptual map’ positioning the various competing brands along classification labels in the consumer minds. This helps them identify a ‘gap’ in the market and ‘position’ their brand or product accordingly.

SUBLIMINAL PERCEPTION

The activation of sensory receptors by stimuli presented below the perceptual threshold or the below the threshold level of conscious awareness

Subliminal Processing is the way in which the human brain senses low-strength stimuli that occur below the level of conscious awareness where consumers are aware but not quite entirely aware of stimuli but are processing them at a subconscious level.  

In order to work, subliminal perception require Absolute and Differential Thresholds.

Absolute Thresholds: the minimum level of stimulus intensity or minimum strength needed to detect a stimulus – for a consumer to perceive a stimulus

Differential Thresholds: the intensity difference needed between two stimuli before they are perceived to be different 

Subliminal Persuasion: a behavioural change brought about or induced by subliminal processing – the Vicary Experiment (The Vicary Experiment was once considered very influential in marketing in shaping subliminal message processing until it was proven to be a fraud but the idea of subliminal perception is still quite dominant in marketing.)

Aspects of perception, subliminal perception and perceptual processing are also often quite prominent in areas of brand logos, packaging and designing. They borrow from the field of semiotics – the study of signs and symbols – which mediate the relationship between the object (product or brand), its sign or symbol (how it is represented through a symbol or logo or design), and the meaning it conveys (how the recipient processes the symbol and sign and makes sense of it).