Internal Assignment

Unit 21. a) Distinguish between exposure, attention and comprehension. Give examples

b) Freud motivation and personality theory

Ans . a.) EXPOSURE:

Exposure occurs when there is physical proximity to a stimulus that allows one or more of

our five senses the opportunity to be activated (BME). Getting exposure essentially means

entering the person's sphere of existence: TV commercials that appear only in programs you

never watch cannot influence you. In seeking exposure, companies must identify those

advertisement media, promotional programs and distribution channels that provide access to

their target market. During exposure a sensation is transmitted to the brain. 3 threshold levels

affect the sensation:

Lower threshold: It is the minimum amount of stimulus intensity necessary for sensation

to occur, no activation happens when the stimulus does not exceed it.

Terminal threshold. -->(se puede ampliar? En libro no viene nada)[Author:IS].

Difference threshold: It represents the smallest change in stimulus intensity that will be

noticed. This change is not always the same and, according to Weber's law, when a

marketing stimulus is very strong, changing it need more radical action than when the

stimulus is weak .

Though exposure is a good thing to have, too much of it may not be so good, this is

the“danger of overexposure” and it is reflected in the habituation, which occurs when a

stimulus becomes so familiar and ordinary that it loses its attention-getting

ability.“Advertising wearout” is the term used to describe ads that lose their effectiveness

because of overexposure. One solution to the wearout problem involves using ads that differ

in their executions but that carry the same basic message.

Some experts believe that subliminal perception is possible so people can be influenced by

stimuli below their conscious level of awareness. Despite all, nowadays the ability of

subliminal stimuli to affect consumer behaviour is highly questionable.

ATTENTION:

Attention is the allocation of processing capacity to a stimulus. According to WEBSTER,

attention is “the act of keeping one's mind closely on something or the ability to do this;

mental concentration”. Before companies can get consumers to pay their product's price, they

must first get consumers to pay attention. But attention can only be given to a small

proportion of the stimuli encountered. Why? The explanation is found in our metal capacity,

which can be decomposed into 3 parts:

Sensory memory refers to that part of capacity used when initially analysing a stimulus

detected by one of our five senses. If the stimulus passes through this phase, it receives

further processing using short-term memory.

Short-term memory is where thinking occurs. Here the stimulus is interpreted and

contemplated using concepts stored in long-term memory.

Long-term memory is the mental warehouse containing all of our knowledge. Depending

on what occurs in short-term memory, new information may be passed along for storage

into long-term memory.

We'll focus on short-term memory, for it's this part of mental capacity that's being allocated

when something catches our attention. Short-term memory is a limited mental resource with

limited size and capacity: we can process only a certain amount of information at a time.

That's why our cognitive system monitors inputs to the senses and chooses some for

processing in the “preattentive processing”. Thus, for marketers, getting attention is a major

hurdle .Two types of factors influence which ones receive attention, personal determinants

and stimulus determinants:

PERSONAL DETERMINANTS:

Needs/motivation: people are particularly attentive to stimuli perceived as relevant to

their needs. Connecting to consumers' needs may require reminding them of their needs

before showing them how the product can satisfy these needs .

Attitudes: We all try to minimise inconsistencies in attitudes and beliefs.

Adaptation level: Even the largest stimuli get less noticeable in time.

Attention span: Short attention span causes marketers problems.

STIMULUS DETERMINANTS:

Position: Stimuli may be more noticeable simply because of where they are located in the

environment. A rule of thumb in advertising is that the upper-left hand corner of the page

is the most likely to receive attention.

Colour: One-colour ads produce 41% more sales than did their black & white

counterparts. Moreover, some colours may be more attention-getting than others .

Size: In general, the larger the stimulus, the more it tends to stand out and draw attention.

Consequently, an easy way for companies to attract attention is to simply make things

bigger.

Intensity: Have you ever noticed that the volume of a commercial is sometimes much

louder than the programming that preceded it? This is far from accidental !!.

Movement: Stimuli in motion are more likely to attract attention than stationary objects.

COMPREHENSION:

Beyond trying to get to think about their products, companies also try to get you to think and

feel about their products in a certain way:

This is the domain of comprehension that involves the interpretation of a stimulus.

It is the point at which meaning is attached to the stimulus.

And both “stimulus categorisation and elaboration” affect the meaning given to a

stimulus:

Stimulus categorisation is the process of categorising concepts stored in memory. How a

stimulus is categorised is important because the particular mental categories to which a

stimulus is assigned affect the opinions formed about the stimulus. (The person tries to

answer the question “what is it?” answering this question involves stimulus categorisation

in which the stimulus is classified using the mental concepts and categories stored in

memory).

Stimulus elaboration is how much stimulus is elaborated during its processing.

There are personal and stimulus determinants in comprehension:

Personal: Knowledge, motivation, expectation.

Stimulus: Linguistics, order effects, context.

How people organise the stimulus is the domain of “Gestalt psychology”, the area

concerned with how people organise stimuli to make them meaningful. There are 3

principles that help the companies to make their ads easier to be recalled:

Simplicity: given the reality that consumers are usually unwilling to invest much of their

cognitive resources into processing advertising messages, advertisers often opt for simple

messages that can be easily comprehended.

Use of figure and ground.

Closure (“Schh… you know how…) .

Example:

Exposure, Attention, and Comprehension on the Internet

The Internet universe literally grows more cluttered by the minute. According to Network

Solutions, Inc., which registers the vast majority of Web addresses around the world, about

10,000 new addresses are registered each day. That means by the time you finish reading this

case, about 60 new domain names will have been gobbled up. With all the clutter on the Web,

how have some firms been able to stand out and attract millions of customers?

First, there are some basics to which online firms must attend. These cost little more than

some time and a little creativity. The first is creating a good site name. The name should be

memorable (yahoo.com), easy to spell (ebay.com), and/or descriptive (wine.com -- a wine

retailer). And, yes, ideally it will have a .com extension. This is the most popular extension

for e-commerce, and browsers, as a default, will automatically add a .com onto any address

that is types without an extension.

The second priority is to make sure the site comes up near the top of the list on any Web

searches. If you use Lycos.com to perform a search for "used books," you get a list of more

than 2.6 million websites. Studies have shown that most people will look only at the top 30

sites on the list, at most. If you are a used-book retailer and you show up as website

#1,865,404 on the search list, there is a very good chance you will not attract a lot of

business. A 1999 Jupiter Research study reveals that "searching on the Internet" is the most

important activity, and Internet users find the information they are looking for by using

search engines and Web directories. A good Web designer can write code that matches up

well with search engine algorithms and results in a site via ranks high on search lists.

Virtually all popular websites have those basics down pat. So the third step is to reach out

proactively to potential customers and bring them to your site. Many companies have turned

to traditional advertising to gain exposure. Television advertising can be effective option --

albeit an expensive one. In late January 1999, hotjobs.com spent $2 million -- half of its 1998

revenues -- on one 30-second be during the Super Bowl. According to CEO Richard Johnson,

so many people tried to visit the site that the company's servers jammed. Johnson says the

number of site hits was six times greater than in the month before. A quirk ad campaign may

or may not help. Pets.com now defunct, built its image around a wise-guy sock puppet.

CNET, a hardware and software retailer, ran a series of television ads featuring cheesy music,

low-budget sets, and unattractive actors. One such ad featured two mean -- one in a T-shirt

that said "you," another in a T-shirt labeled "the right computer" -- coming together and

joining hands 

thanks to the efforts of another guys in a CNET T-shirt. The production quality was

rudimentary enough that any sophomore film student could have produced it. The spots were

so bad that they stood out from the slick, expensive commercials to which viewers were

accustomed. Critics ripped the campaign to shred, but CNET called it a success.

Other Internet firms have used sports sponsorship to increase visibility. CarsDirect.com, a

highly rated site that allows consumers to purchase automobiles online, once purchased the

naming rights to a NASCAR auto race (the CarsDirect.com 400). Lycos also has tried to

make the most of NASCAR's increasing popularity. It spent hundreds of thousands of dollars

to have its name and logo plastered all over the car of popular driver Johnny Benson.

Meanwhile, online computer retailer Insight and furniture seller galleryfurniture.com each

targeted football fans by purchasing the naming rights to college bowl games.

Of course, if you can reach consumers while they are in front of their computers rather that

their television sets, you may stand an even better chance of getting them to your site.

However, typicall banner ads are inefficient, averaging click-through rates of only about 0.5

percent (only one of every 200 people exposed to the ad actually clicked on the ad). Too

often, banner ads are just wallpaper; consumers may see them but they usually are not

sufficiently stimulated to click-through. However, Michele Slack of the online advertising

group Jupiter Communications believes banner ads can be useful if used correctly. "The

novelty factor is wearing off," she says. But "when an ad is targeted well and the creative is

good, click-through rates are much higher."

An alternative way to reach people who are already online is through partnerships. One of the

most visible examples of such an alliance is the one between Yahoo! and Amazon.com. Let's

say you're working on a project of the Great Depression and you want to see what kind of

information is available online. If you go to Yahoo! and type in "Great Depression," you will

not only be presented with a list of websites, but you will also see a link that will allow you to

click to see a list of books on the Great Depression that are available through Amazon.

Another example of a successful partnership was forged in 1998 between Rollingstone.com

and the website building and hosting service Tripod. Every one of the 3,000 artist pages on

Rollingstone.com contained a link to Tripod. The goal was to encourage fans to use Tripod's

tools to build webpages dedicated to their favorite singers or bands. According to the research

company Media Metrix, during the course of the alliance Tripod jumped from the Web's

fourteenth most popular website to number eight. Alliances with nonvirtual companies are

another option. In 2003, the Internet classified firm CareerBuilder kicked off a cross-

promotional campaign with major Internet firms, including AOL and MSN.

A less subtle but nonetheless effective way to build traffic is to more or less pay people to

visit your site. One study showed more than half of Internet consumers would be more likely

to purchase from a site if they could participate in some sort of loyalty program. Hundreds of

online merchants in more than 20 categories have signed up with a network program called

ClickRewards. Customers making purchases at ClickRewards member river receive frequent-

flies miles or other types of benefits. Mypoints.com offers a similar incentive program in

which customers are rewarded with air travel, gift certificates and discounes for shopping at

member merchants. The search engine iwon.com was even more direct. It rewards one lucky

visitor each weekday with a $10,000 prize. According to Forrester Research, companies in

2002 spent about $6 billion annually on online incentives and promotions.

Finally, some firms rely on e-mail to thoroughly mine their existing customer databases. The

auction site Onsale (later merged with Egghead.com) proved just how successful e-mail can

be. It sent out targeted e-nails to its customers based on their part bidding activities and

previously stated interests. Click-through rates on these targeted e-nails averaged a

remarkable 30 percent. E-mail marketing also holds promise for business-to-business firms.

The Peppers and Rogers Group is a marketing firm that gives presentations around the United

States. At the end of the presentations, people are invited to go to the company's website and

sign up for their e-mail newsletter, Inside 1 to 1. The newsletter invites readers to visit the

Peppers and Rogers website to learn more about various articles, promote their products and

services, and participate in entrop. Inside 1 to 1 now boasts a subscriber base of 45,000 but

the company estimates that about 200,000 people actually see it because subscribers forward

it to their friends and colleagues. About 14,000 people visit the Peppers and Rogers site each

week, with traffic often peaking immediately after the newsletter is sent.

As you can see, there is no one effective method for generating interest in a website. The

same methods that have worked for some firms have failed for other. One certainty is that as

the Internet grows and more people do business online, Internet firms will have to find ever

more creative ways to expose customers to their sites and keep their attention once there.

Ans b) Sigmund Freud (1856–1939) insisted that sexuality and aggression were the driving

forces behind all human motivation. He theorized three areas of the mind, namely the

conscious, preconscious, and unconscious. Freud argued that the material in the unconscious

mind would bring feelings of fear, emotional pain or guilt. “We cannot bear to know certain

things about ourselves. Therefore, we do not (consciously) know them. Yet what resides in

the unconscious profoundly affects our behavior and experience, even though we do not

know we are being affected”. Freud believed that our behaviors stemmed from deep-seated

sexual and aggressive motivation in our identity, and were outwardly projected in a manner

which was controlled by the ego and superego. These are the regulatory systems which

manipulate the motivators so that we behave in a manner which is in line with our beliefs,

and in ways which are acceptable to society.

FREUD MOTIVATION AND PERSONALITY THEORY:

A sales theory which surposes that consumers choose whether or not to purchase a product

due to unconscious desires and motivators, and that the qualities of the product, such as

touch, taste or smell, remind them of past events. Recognizing how the elements of a product

trigger an emotional response from the consumer can help a marketer or salesperson

understand how to lead a consumer toward making a purchase. 

The Freudian Motivation Theory explains the sales process in terms of a consumer fulfilling a

functional need, such as blinds to cover a window, as well as unconscious needs, such as the

fear of being seen naked by those outside. A salesperson trying to get a consumer to purchase

furniture, for example, may ask if this is the first home that the consumer has lived in on his

own. If the consumer indicates yes, this may prompt the salesperson to mention how the

furniture is warm or comfortable, triggering a feeling of safety.The three structures of

personality in Freud's theory is described in this article.

Sigmund Freud (1856-1939) developed his ideas about psychoanalytic theory from work with

mental patients. He was a medical doctor who specialized in neurology. He spent most of his

years in Vienna, though he moved to London near the end of his career because of the Nazis'

anti-Semitism.

Freud believed that personality has three structures: the id, the ego, and the superego. The id

is the Freudian structure of personality that consists of instincts, which are an individual's

reservoir of psychic energy. In Freud's view, the id is totally unconscious; it has no contact

with reality. As children experience the demands and constraints of reality, a new structure of

personality emerges- the ego, the Freudian structure of personality that deals with the

demands of reality. The ego is called the executive branch of personality because it uses

reasoning to make decisions. The id and the ego have no morality. They do not take into

account whether something is right or wrong. The superego is the Freudian structure of

personality that is the moral branch of personality. The superego takes into account whether

something is right or wrong. Think of the superego as what we often refer to as our

"conscience." You probably are beginning to sense that both the id and the superego make

life rough for the ego. Your ego might say, "I will have sex only occasionally and be sure to

take the proper precautions because I don't want the intrusion of a child in the development of

my career." However, your id is saying, "I want to be satisfied; sex is pleasurable." Your

superego is at work, too: "I feel guilty about having sex before I'm married."

Remember that Freud considered personality to be like an iceberg; most of personality exists

below our level of awareness, just as the massive part of an iceberg is beneath the surface of

the water. Freud believed that most of the important personality processes occur below the

level of conscious awareness. In examining people's conscious thoughts about their

behaviors, we can see some reflections of the ego and the superego. Whereas the ego and

superego are partly conscious and partly unconscious, the primitive id is the unconscious, the

totally submerged part of the iceberg.

2. What do you understand by Absolute Threshold and Differential Threshold? How

do Marketers apply the concept of “Just Noticeable Difference” in their marketing

strategy. Explain by taking examples from FMCG category

Ans .2

ABSOLUTE THRESHOLD: The minimum intensity of stimulation (brightness of a light;

loudness of a tone) required to produce a detectable sensory experience

DIFFERENCE THRESHOLD: The minimum change in intensity required to produce a

detectable change in sensory experience (this is also known as a Just Noticeable Difference or

JND)

The absolute threshold is the minimum intensity of stimulus required to be perceived. In

other words, it is the intensity amount which is needed to detect the difference between

nothing and something. It is the lowest level at which an individual can experience a

sensation.

On the other hand, the minimal difference that can be detected between two stimuli is called

the difference threshold or the j.n.d. (just noticeable difference). The main difference between

the two concepts is that the differential threshold is a relative concept. Whereas the absolute

threshold deals with whether or not a stimulus can be perceived, the differential threshold

refers to the intensity difference needed between two stimuli before people can perceive that

the stimuli are different.

The marketing implication of absolute threshold is that consumers will only perceive a

marketing stimulus when it is higher than absolute threshold. In other words, if images or

words in a commercial are too small, consumer’s sensory receptors will not ve activated and

the stimulus will not be perceived.   The differential threshold also has very important

marketing applications 

Manufacturers and marketers endeavor to determine the relevant j.n.d for their products for

two very different reasons: (1) negative changes (e.g.,reductions in product size or quality or

increase in product price) are not discernible to the public (ie., remain below j.n.d) and (2)

product improvements(eg., improved or updated packaging, larger size or lower price) are

very apparent to consumers

Weber's Law: Just Noticeable Difference: Differential Threshold

The differential threshold

The minimal difference that can be detected between two similar stimuli is called the

differential threshold, or the just noticeable difference (the j.n.d.). A nineteenth-century

German scientist named Ernst Weber discovered that the j.n.d. between two stimuli was not

an absolute amount, but an amount relative to the intensity of the first stimulus. Weber’s law,

as it has come to be known, states that the stronger the initial stimulus, the greater the

additional intensity needed for the second stimulus to be perceived as different. For example,

if the price of a half gallon container of premium squeezed orange juice is $5.50, most

consumers will probably not notice an increase in 25 cents, and it may take an increase of 50

cents or more before a differencial in price would be noticed. However, a 50 cent increase in

the price of gasoline would be noticed very quickly by consumers because it is a significant

percentage of the initial cost of gasoline.

According to Weber’s law, an additional level of stimulus equivalent to the j.n.d. must be

added for the majority of people to perceive a difference between the resulting stimulus and

the initial stimulus. Read the articles listed below in the order that they appear for more

information.

The importance of JND to marketers is the challenge in determining the amount of change

necessary for it to be noticed by the consumers. Any change less than the JND is wasted

because it is not perceived. But jus as importantly, any change significantly larger then the

JND can also be considered wasteful because you end up spending more than is necessary to

elicit the necessary response (e.g., the customer’s attention). This also may end up with you

irritating the customer (in the case or increasing volume to get their attention or visual

excitement and color scheme).

An example of the JND can be seen in the example at the beginning of this column. The

reason the 10% sale does not excite is that it is below the JND. Research has proven that the

JND for price tends to be between 20 to 25%. Any sale below that will tend not to get much

attention because the consumer does not believe it makes large enough difference for him/her

to spend the effort to purchase. However much the 50% off sale price may attract the

consumers, you will end up giving up money since it was more than enough to get their

attention. In fact, going beyond the JND can actually hurt you in the long run. 

2. example iPod Headphones The ultimate example of Just Noticeable Difference might be

the iPod’s white headphones. Using white headphones to launch Apple’s mp3 player wasn’t

merely disruptive for a category with commonly black headphones, it was also ownable as

the iPod’s signature color. Further, the distinctive color publicly identified the consumer’s

brand preference – a fact previously hidden in the consumer’s pocket–creating a tribe-like

community and encouraging a wider audience to join the digital music revolution.