ELEMENTS OF PERCEPTION

1.Perceptual Selection
2.Perceptual Organization
3.Perceptual interpretation

1. PERCEPTUAL SELECTION
Consumers subconsciously exercise a great deal of selectivity as to which aspects of the
environment they perceive. An individual may look at some things, ignore others, and turn away
from still others. In actually, people receive only a small fraction of the stimuli to which they
were exposed.
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Nature of the stimulus

There are number of variables that affect the consumers perception

Such as nature of the product,

Its physical attributes,
The package design,
The brand name,
The advertisements etc..

Expectations
People usually see what they expect to see, and what they expect to see is usually based on
familiarity, . Previous experience, or preconditioned set. In a marketing context, people tend to
perceive products and product attributes according to their own expectations.

Motives
People tend to perceive the things they need or want;
The stronger the need the greater the tendency to ignore unrelated stimuli in t.
In general, there is heightened awareness of stimuli that are relevant to ones
decreased awareness of stimuli that are irrelevant to those needs.

Selective perception
The consumers selection of stimuli from the environment is based on the interactions of expectations
and motives with the stimulus itself. These factors give rise to four important concepts concerning
perception.

 Selective Exposure
Consumers actively seek out messages that they find pleasant or with which they are sympathetic. And they
actively avoid painful or threatening ones. They also selectively expose themselves to advertisements that
reassure them of the wisdom of their purchase decisions.

Selective attention
Consumers exercise a great deal of selectivity in terms of the attention they give to commercial stimuli. They
have a heightened awareness of stimuli that meet their needs or interests and minimal awareness of stimuli
irrelevant to their needs. Thus, consumers are likely to note ads for products that would satisfy their needs and
disregard those in which they have no interest.

 Perceptual Defense
Consumers subconsciously screen out stimuli that they find psychologically threatening, even though
exposure has already taken place. Thus, threatening or otherwise damaging stimuli are less likely to be
consciously perceived than are neutral stimuli at the same level of exposure.

Perceptual Blocking
Consumers protect themselves from being bombarded with stimuli by simply tuning out blocking such
stimuli from conscious awareness. They do so out of self protecting because of the visually overwhelming
nature of the world in which we live. The popularity of such devices as TiVo and Replay TV, which enable
viewers to skip over TV commercials with great ease, is, in part, a result of perceptual blocking.

2. PERCEPTUAL ORGANIZATION
People do not experience a numerous stimuli they select from the environment as separate and discrete
sensations rather they tend to organize them into groups and perceive them as unified wholes.
Figure and Grounds
People have tendency to organize their perceptions into figure and ground relationship. How a figureground pattern is perceived can be influenced by prior pleasant or painful associations with one or the other
element in isolation.
Grouping
Individuals tend to group stimuli so that they form a unified picture or impression. The perception of stimuli
as groups or chunks of information, rather than as discrete bits of information, facilitates their memory and
recall. Grouping can be used advantageously by marketers to simply certain desired meanings in connection
with their products.

 Closure
Individuals have a need for closure. They express this need by organizing their perceptions so that they form a
complete picture. If the pattern of stimuli to which they are exposed is incomplete, they tend to perceive it,
nevertheless, as complete; that is, they consciously or subconsciously fill in the missing pieces.

3.

PERCEPTUAL INTERPRETATION
Stimuli are often highly ambiguous. Some stimuli are weak because of such factors as poor
visibility, brief exposure, high noise level or constant fluctuations. Even the stimuli that are
strong tend to fluctuate dramatically because of such factors as different angles of viewing,
varying distances, and changing levels if illumination.

Perceptual distortion
Individuals are subject to a number of influences that tend to distort their
perceptions,.

Physical appearances,
Stereotypes,
First impressions,
Jumping to conclusions and
The halo effect

 Consumer imagery
Consumers have a number of enduring perceptions, or images, that are particularly relevant to the
study of consumer behavior. Products and brands have symbolic value for individuals, who evaluate
them on the basis of their consistency with their personal pictures of themselves.

Product positioning
The essence of successful marketing is the image that a product has in the mind of the consumer-that
is positioning. Positioning is more important to the ultimate success of a product than are its actual
characteristics, although products are poorly made will not succeed in the long run on the basis of
image alone