PERCEPTION AND PACKAGING

Perception is the process which attaches the meaning of the things in the world around. What role has perceptual process in perception? Although perception process is all the time the same the perception is unique for each person.  This article will try to explain the main points of the perception and perceptual process to which belongs sensation, attention and interpretation.

Perception is “the sense organs Trans physical energy from the outside world, which is encoded and delivered to the brain via sensory neurons for interpretation by the perceptual system” (Stles, 2005)

“Perception is the process of sensing, selecting and interpreting consumer stimuli in the external world.” (Wilkie, 1994)

“…is how we see the world around us” (Knuk & Schiffman, 2003)

Perception is a process which comprises on people’s sensation, attention and interpretation. It contains people’s sensory experience about the world and the environmental stimuli.

Nowadays people can have everything they want to have. For the decision people make have influence a lot of things. To this belong for example: social class, culture, age, life style, occupation. “The meaning of stimuli is interpreter by the individual who is influence by their unique biases and experiences.”(Salmon, Bomossy, Hogg, Askegaard, 2010)

Below there is a diagram of Kotlers et al. which shows the “me” concept.

(Adam, 2009)

This diagram shows how many things have influence for the buyer. It starts from the cultural and goes through social, personal and psychological influences. Advertising try to show the products in the way that will go to the different aspects of people’s life and senses.

The Howard Sheth Theory, 1999 of buyer behavior diagram shows all perceptual process which people wrestle every day.  The perceptual process is an environmental thing which has influence on people’s mind and in the end of the stimuli evokes the behaviour. It shows how many things have influence on people’s decision.

  

 

Everyday a person is bombarded with information which goes into people’s mind but just a small number of stimuli people can notice and in the small amount people attend to because take all this stimuli is impossible so people just do not attend them or just ignore it; people are not able to smell the blood, for example.

The example of the senses which goes into our mind is that when people go out and they don’t know what weather is outside and it is raining and cold so people can get wet and the response for that is individuals go back and take something warm to wear and get the umbrella not o get wet. (Landau, Sabini, Jonides, 2000).

Sensation is a very important in perceptual process. Sensation is a very important in perceptual process. Sensation flow in on people’s sensory receptors to which belong: eyes, fingers, nose, ears and mouth.  From the sensation the information are sent to person’s mind and perception role start from this point. Everyone is an individual so the audience interpret the advertisements in different way.  The advertisements are done in a way to sway people to buy the product.  The example can be the Heineken “Walk in fridge” advertisement.  The senses which are contained in this advertisement are sight and smell. Although this advertisement refers to female and male some people do not like it and it does not appeal to these audiences because of different priorities.

In the perceptual princess the position of the product has a very important meaning. Usually customers categorize the products by the particular opinion and “the evaluate each alternative in terms on its relative standing on this dimensions.” (Salomon, Bomossy, Hogg, Askegaard, 2010). Perceptual map shows how people can interept the things and what the product position is. Perceptual map “...offers a unique ability to communicate the complex relationships between marketplace competitors and the criteria used by buyers in making purchase decisions and recommendations. It is powerful graphic simplicity appeals to senior management and can stimulate discussion and strategic thinking at all levels of all types of organization.” (Populus, 2009)

The perceptual map can help the organizations indentify the positioning strategy. Below there is a very basic perceptual map. It shows an example of different clothes brands.

Adapted from: http://psychology.wikia.com/wiki/Perceptual_mapping

It is the example of the opinion that people can have about different brands. The perceptual maps belong to individuals. Some brands for different people can be on different position. The perceptual map could help an organization launch a new brand perhaps at the medium price and quality range.

Another part of the perceptual process is attention. Attention is a stimulus which goes into people’s mind and how it focuses on people’s mind. People are classified in a variety of categories such as: age, gender, race, nationality, physical categories, education, occupation and status. People attend to stimuli by focusing on features that capture people’s attention. If normal channels of sensory awareness receive incomplete information, the mind often fills in the gaps. This is known as perceptual closure. It occurs when we receive some data that we judge important and incomplete.  When perceptual closure occurs, we allow our minds to fill in the missing data, especially if the situation or topic is familiar. (Mather, 2006).

For the attention of the customers has influence the package of the product. If the package of the product is more unusual the customer will have a bigger attention on this. An example can be the package of Pringles which are unusual, eye-catching and very successful as a brand. Another thing which can have people’s attention is unusual advertisements or text in the advertisements.

The next step which belongs to perceptual process is interpretation. Interpretation has to do with people’s current beliefs, assumptions, values and attitudes as well as customers past learning and experience. The beliefs, assumptions, values, attitudes, past learning and experiences combine to form an individual frame of reference, which is a metal filter by which perceptions are interpreted and evaluated. (SocyBerty, 2009). The perceptual interpretations and evaluation translate to personal meaning and intention, which further influence behaviour in line with the personal meaning and intention. (Ponty, 2002).

There are many factors which may affect personal perception to the world around these people. To this can belong for example: age, gender, personality, social class, level of education. All of this depends from the destination to which group of people the product should appeal. For example some advertisements will not be interesting for men and vice versa. The affects can also come from the stereotypes and inaccurate perceptions.

A perceptual process can be affected by some stages as:

Primitive categorization – in this the basic stimuli are isolated. If the woman wants to feel better she goes to the perfume shop and she’s chosen the product she likes.

Cue check – this is the analyzed characteristic which prepare for the selection. Women are choosing the perfumes which “fit” her the most, she is choosing by the smell, shape or colour of the bottle. 

Confirmation check – in here the schema is selected.

 Confirmation completion – the decision is made. The process in which customer is thinking he made a right decision and customer decided it by the colour of the bottle or interesting name. (Salomon et al, 2010). The example of the perception can be the package of Pringles. It is a very special, unique and eye-catching package. The perception process is a very clear in here. This package starts up the sensation like: sight by this unique package, taste because of the picture which have influence on people’s “taste imagination” and touch by the shape of the package which is original and everyone may want to touch it.

The second step of perception process is attention.  The package of Pringles catches the attention almost of everyone.  It is because of the all senses which the package takes from the customers. And finally interpretations. The package gives a lot of the information. For the customers everything is clear. The pictures in this are really nice and can trigger people imagination and the colours are suitable to the flavour.  The shape of the package and the crisps makes it very unusual and people want to try these special crisps.

The perception contains the meaning of the things which include people, experiences and objects that have influence on people. People interpret the world around us by the senses: smell, sight, sound, taste and touch. This wakes the customers’ attention and finally people interpret the world which is around.

Sensation, attention and interpretation those three things have the biggest influence on the decision people makes.

Bibliography:

Mather, G. (2006) Fundaments of Perception. Usa, Canada: Psychology Press

Michael R., Salmon, Gary Bomossy, Margaret K Hogg (2010) Customer behavior a European prospective. Fourth edition ed. Essex: Prentice Hall.

Bennett, P. (2006) Communicating about risk to public health: pointers to good practice.

Ponty, M. (2002) Phenomenology of Perception. New York.

SocyBerty (2009) A stages of human perceptual process [online]. Available from: http://socyberty.com/psychology/the-stages-of-human-perceptual-process/

Styles E.A. (2005) Attention, Perception and Memory. Canada: Psychology Press.