Week 02

Week 02

Consumer Behavior · Davood Wadi, PhD

Perception and Sensory Marketing

We do not see things as they are. We see things through our senses and personal filters.

A plain cream mug at the top, as it is. Lines of sight run down through a band of the five senses (an eye, an ear, a nose, a hand and lips), then through three overlapping coloured lenses, the personal filters. At the bottom the same mug is tilted, washed ochre and carries a heart: as we see it.AS IT ISOUR SENSESPERSONALFILTERSAS WE SEE IT

What Is Perception?

Perception is the process of selecting, organizing, and interpreting sensations.

Four panels left to right. Sensations: twenty small ink marks of mixed shapes scattered at random. Selecting: the same scatter with seven dots washed teal. Organizing: those seven dots moved into two eyes and a smile. Interpreting: a whole smiling face washed teal.SENSATIONSSELECTINGORGANIZINGINTERPRETING

Raw sensory inputs reach our sensory organs every second.

Sights, sounds, smells, tastes, and textures flood our environment.

A person stands in the middle, ringed by five kinds of input: sights (colour swatches), sounds (music notes), smells (rising wisps), tastes (a wrapped sweet) and textures (a woven patch). Two arrows run from each one to the person's head.SIGHTSSOUNDSSMELLSTASTESTEXTURES

Perception creates meaning out of this chaos.

Two people exposed to the exact same advertisement often walk away with completely different impressions.

One billboard advertisement in the middle, showing a product box with the brand badge. Two people look up at it from either side. One thinks of a whole heart; the other thinks of a broken heart.

The Three Stages of Perception

Perception occurs in three sequential stages.

A funnel lying on its side. Stage 1, Exposure, is the wide mouth holding thirty-six small marks. Stage 2, Attention, is narrower and holds eight dots. Stage 3, Interpretation, is a thin tube holding one teal dot, with an arrow leading out. Under the first two stages, marks drop out of the funnel into two piles marked filtered out.STAGE 1ExposureSTAGE 2AttentionSTAGE 3InterpretationFILTERED OUTFILTERED OUT

  1. Stage 1 is Exposure.

    Sensory stimuli come within the range of a person's sensory receptors.

  2. Stage 2 is Attention.

    The mind allocates mental processing capacity to a specific stimulus.

  3. Stage 3 is Interpretation.

    The brain assigns meaning to the sensory stimulus based on past experiences and expectations.

Most stimuli get filtered out during exposure and attention before reaching interpretation.

Exercise · Put it in order

Follow one ad through the three stages of perception. Put Maya's moments in the order they happen.

Tap a step, then the number where it belongs.

Sensory Marketing: Beyond Sight and Sound

Sensory marketing engages the consumer's senses to influence their feelings and choices.

  1. Sight creates visual identity, package recognition, and color associations.

    An eye on the left looks along a shelf of five packs. Four are plain cream; the eye's line of sight lands on the one teal pack with the brand badge.

  2. Sound shapes shopping tempo and brand memory through musical jingles.

    A loudspeaker plays music notes into a store. A shopper pushing a cart hums along: the same notes sit in a thought cloud above the shopper's head.

  3. Smell connects directly to the limbic system, triggering emotional memories.

    A perfume bottle gives off a scent that drifts into the nose of a head in profile. An arrow runs from the nose straight to a heart inside the head, marked limbic system.LIMBIC SYSTEM

  4. Touch, also called haptics, builds psychological ownership when consumers hold an item.

    A shopper holds a teal product box close against the chest. A tag hanging from the box reads mine.MINE

  5. Taste drives loyalty in food and beverage markets through distinct flavor profiles.

    A shopper puts another teal drinks can into a shopping cart that already holds four of the same teal can.

Sensory Thresholds: The Limits of Awareness

Senses have physical and psychological limits.

  1. The absolute threshold is the minimum amount of stimulation a person can detect on a sensory channel.

    Eight bars of stimulation rising in height from left to right. A line across them is the absolute threshold. The four bars that stop below the line are left cream, marked not detected; the four that cross it are washed teal, marked detected.STIMULATIONABSOLUTE THRESHOLDNOT DETECTEDDETECTED

  2. A billboard with tiny text placed far from a highway falls below the absolute threshold of drivers.

    The view through a car windscreen: a highway runs to the horizon, and far off beside it stands a small billboard whose lines of text are too small to read. An ochre question mark hangs over it.?

  3. The differential threshold is the ability of a sensory system to detect changes or differences between two stimuli. The minimum difference between two stimuli needed for detection is called the Just Noticeable Difference, or JND.

    Four rows, each comparing two bars. The top bar of each pair is always the same length; the bottom bar is longer by a small piece that grows from row to row. The first two rows are marked same; the last two are marked different. The piece in the first row marked different is washed teal and bracketed as the JND.SAMESAMEDIFFERENTDIFFERENTJND
Knowledge Check

A juice brand changes the orange on its label to a very slightly darker shade. Shoppers compare the old and new bottles side by side and cannot tell them apart. What does this tell the brand?

Weber's Law: When Differences Matter

Weber's Law states that the stronger the initial stimulus, the greater the change must be for people to notice it.

The needed change is not a fixed amount. It is a constant proportion of the initial intensity.

Three bars of rising length, each an initial stimulus. Each ends in a teal piece one tenth of its length, marked plus ten per cent, so the piece grows as the bar grows.+10%+10%+10%INITIAL STIMULUS

  1. A ten-cent price increase on a one-dollar candy bar is noticeable right away because it is a ten percent jump.

    A candy bar whose price goes from one dollar to one dollar ten. Its price bar grows by a teal tenth, marked plus ten per cent.$1.00 → $1.10+10%

  2. A ten-cent price increase on a thousand-dollar laptop will go completely unnoticed.

    A laptop whose price goes from one thousand dollars to one thousand dollars and ten cents. Its price bar grows by a sliver too thin to see, marked plus 0.01 per cent.$1,000.00 → $1,000.10+0.01%

  3. Marketers stay below the JND when shrinking package sizes or raising prices slightly.

    Two small scenes. A snack pack drawn inside the pencil outline of its old, bigger size. A price tag of three ninety-nine followed by one of four oh nine. Below, a meter shows the pointer sitting just short of the JND mark.$3.99$4.09JND

  4. Marketers exceed the JND when redesigning a package or announcing a major discount.

    Two small scenes. A small plain old pack, an arrow, and a bigger redesigned pack in bold ochre with stripes and the word new. A big ochre starburst reading minus forty per cent. Below, a meter shows the pointer far past the JND mark.NEW−40%JND
Knowledge Check

Four stores each raise one price by exactly one dollar. According to Weber's Law, which increase are shoppers most likely to notice?

Attention: The Battle for Mental Energy

Consumers face sensory overload from thousands of ads, notifications, and store displays every day.

A shopper, hands to the head, stands in a narrow gap between two walls of clutter: ads, store signs reading sale, new, buy and minus fifty per cent, and phones whose ochre notification badges read 5, 7, 12, 34 and 99-plus.12SALE599+NEW7−50%34BUY

  1. Selective exposure means consumers choose what media and messages they see or avoid.

    A video player showing an ad for a product box, with a teal skip ad button in the corner and a pointer about to press it.SKIP AD ›

  2. Perceptual vigilance means consumers notice stimuli that relate to their current needs. A hungry person notices restaurant signs.

    A hungry person, thinking of a fork and knife, looks past a clothes shop sign and a hair salon sign to a third, teal restaurant sign with a fork and knife on it. A line of sight arcs from the person's eyes to that sign.

  3. Perceptual defense means consumers screen out threatening or contradictory messages. Heavy smokers often ignore warning labels on cigarette packs.

    A smoker holds a cigarette to the lips and turns the head away, while the other hand holds out a cigarette pack with a big ochre warning label on it, unlooked-at.WARNING

  4. Adaptation occurs when consumers no with time stop paying attention to familiar stimuli.

    The same person passes the same billboard three times along a time line. New: facing it and pointing up at it. Familiar: walking by, arms down. With time: turned away from it, looking at a phone.NEWFAMILIARWITH TIME

Machine Perception: How AI Agents Perceive Products

An AI agent that shops for a consumer does not see, hear, smell, touch, or taste a product.

It perceives a product through data: the name, price, size, ingredients, ratings, and reviews.

For an AI agent, exposure means the product information is available for the agent to read.

A product with missing or unclear details may never reach the agent's attention.

The AI agent phone stands between two product data sheets. On the left, a teal cereal box and its complete sheet: price $4.99, size 500 g, ingredients oats and honey, four stars, 1,240 reviews; an arrow runs from the sheet to the agent. On the right, a camel cereal box and a sheet with only a price of $5.49; its other details are empty pencil dashes, and no arrow reaches the agent.PRICE$4.99SIZE500 GINGREDIENTSOATS, HONEYRATINGREVIEWS1,240PRICE$5.49SIZEINGREDIENTSRATINGREVIEWS

Attention depends on position for both people and AI agents.

  1. Shoppers notice products at eye level on a shelf and at the top of a search results page more often.

    Two small scenes. Left: a shopper looks straight ahead at the middle shelf of three, where the teal product sits at eye level. Right: a page of search results with a pointer on the first result, whose thumbnail is teal.

  2. Research shows that AI agents can also favor options because of where they appear in a list.

    The AI agent phone beside a page of search results; an arrow runs from the agent to the first result, whose thumbnail is teal.

Sensory marketing still matters, because the consumer uses the product with all five senses after the sale.

Exercise · Sort into groups

An AI agent is choosing a scented candle for a consumer. Which of these can the agent perceive, and which can only the consumer perceive? Sort them into the two groups.

      Tap a card, then tap the group it belongs to.

      Interpretation and Gestalt Principles

      People do not interpret stimuli in isolation. They organize them into patterns.

      Gestalt psychology explains how people construct whole meanings from individual elements.

      Twenty-two separate dots with gaps between them, laid out so that together they read as one heart.

      1. The Closure principle means people fill in missing pieces to perceive a complete picture, such as an incomplete brand logo.

        A brand logo on a cream card: three ochre discs, each with a wedge cut out, placed so the cut-outs line up into a triangle that is never drawn. Two short lines beneath stand for the brand name.

      2. The Similarity principle means consumers group objects with shared visual traits like color and shape together.

        A shelf of twenty-four evenly spaced packs in three rows. The three left columns are camel boxes, the middle two are dark round tins, the right three are pale blue tall bottles, so the eye sees three blocks.

      3. The Figure-Ground principle means people separate a main focal object from its background.

        The classic vase-and-faces picture: a dark vase in the middle of a cream panel, whose two edges are also the profiles of two pale faces looking at each other.
      Exercise · Which one is it?

      Each shopper below makes sense of what they see. Name the Gestalt principle at work in each case.

      A café's logo is a coffee cup drawn with gaps in its rim and handle. Customers still see a whole cup.

      Which concept does this case show?

      Semiotics: The Meaning of Marketing Messages

      Marketers design ads to send symbolic messages to buyers.

      Semiotics is the study of signs, symbols, and their assigned meanings.

      A triangle of three parts. Bottom left, the object: a luxury watch with a gold bezel. Top, the sign: an ad card showing a bald eagle soaring. Bottom right, the interpretant: a person standing tall and confident on a pale sky wash, with freedom and prestige written beneath. Arrows run from the watch up to the eagle ad and from the ad down to the person.OBJECTSIGNINTERPRETANTfreedom and prestige

      1. An object is the actual product being promoted.

      2. A sign is the sensory image or symbol representing the intended meaning.

      3. An interpretant is the meaning or feeling derived by the consumer from the sign.

      A luxury watch ad uses an image of an eagle to signify freedom and prestige.

      Discussion: Sensory Signatures

      Discussion: Name a brand that you recognize instantly without seeing its name or logo. Does it use a signature scent, a distinct jingle, a unique bottle shape, or a specific color? How does that sensory cue build brand recall?

      A blank brand card in the middle holding only a question mark: no name and no logo. Four cues point to it: a signature scent (a perfume bottle), a distinct jingle (music notes), a unique bottle shape (a waisted, contoured bottle) and a specific color (an ochre swatch).SIGNATURE SCENTDISTINCT JINGLEUNIQUE BOTTLE SHAPESPECIFIC COLOR?BRAND RECALL