Sensation & Perception

Michael J. KalsherMGMT 4460/6940

Summer 2014

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CHAPTER OBJECTIVES

• Perception is a three-stage process that translates raw stimuli into meaning.

• Products and commercial messages often appeal to our senses, but many of them will not succeed.

• The design of a product today is a key driver of its success or failure.

• Subliminal advertising is a controversial—but largely ineffective—way to talk to consumers.

• We interpret the stimuli to which we do pay attention according to learned patterns and expectations.

• The science of semiotics helps us to understand how symbols are used to create meaning.

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Sensation

• Immediate response of our sensory receptors…

…eyes, ears, nose, mouth, fingers…

• …to basic stimuli……such as light, color,

sound, odor, and texture

The Sensory & Motor Homunculus

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PerceptionThe process by which sensations are selected, organized, and interpreted (i.e., adding meaning to raw sensations).

Figure 2.1

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Communication-Human Information Processing (C-HIP) Model

Wogalter, DeJoy, & Laughery (1999). Warnings and Risk Communication. London: Taylor & Francis.

Wogalter, M.S. (2006). Handbook of Warnings. Mahwah, NJ: Erlbaum

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Sensory SystemsWe receive external stimuli through our five senses

– Each of our senses has a specific sensory receptor

Hedonic Consumption– The multisensory, fantasy, and

emotional aspects of consumers’ interactions with products.

– Modern consumers demand hedonic value in addition to basic function.

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Vision– Attracting and maintaining

attention is the first step!– Reaction is biological and

cultural.– Color provokes emotion

• Red is energizing• Blue is r-e-l-a-x-i-n-g…• Reactions to color are biological

and learned

– In the U.S., brighter = more complex

– Culture, gender, aging– Color associated with specific

companies

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Portable Gas Containers

Are manufacturers trying their best to alert consumers to the dangers of “co-occurrence” hazards associated with gasoline?

Attracting and Maintaining Consumers’ Attention is Not Always a Goal!

Flammable Vapor Ignition Resistant (FVIR) Water Heaters

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Each SawStop saw is equipped with a safety system that detects when someone accidentally contacts the spinning saw blade, and then stops the blade in milliseconds.

In most cases, such an accident would result in just a nick on a SawStop saw, instead of the devastating injury which would likely occur on an ordinary saw.

Some noteworthy examples …

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VisionSize Matters!– We tend to eat more:

• When food container is larger• When our plate still contains food• When we see an assortment of

foods (e.g., M&Ms, jelly beans)

– We focus on height rather than width when pouring liquid into a glass

– Trade dress (Combinations of color associated with a particular corporation or product)

VERTICAL HORIZONTAL ILLUSION

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Smell

Odors = mood & memory (limbic system)

– Folger’s coffee ad http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=I4kNl7cQdcU

– Fresh cinnamon buns = male sexual arousal?– Two-day-old tee-shirts and female attraction?– Baron & Kalsher study of driving performance

– Scented marketing• Cadillac’s “Nuance” scent = expensive upholstery• Scratch and sniff

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Hearing

Many aspects of sound affect people’s feelings and behaviors

– Phonemes of brands = unique product meanings

• “i” brands are perceived as “lighter” than “a” brands

– Effect of Muzak• Stimulus “progression”• Reduced absenteeism, enhanced performance

MUZAK.COM

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Touch• Haptic senses affect product experience & judgment• Individual differences and the Need for Touch Scale• Kansei engineering (translates customer feelings into design elements)

• Fabric textures and surfaces with products & packaging (e.g., “soft-touch” resins)

Perception Male Female

High Class Wool Silk Fine

Low Class Denim Cotton

Heavy Light Course

Tactile-Quality Associations

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http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DHoXtC4Be_0

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xCg6DVbin9U

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OV29DWIT6kI

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SG4RZY0s25E

Consider the following questions for each ad:1.Who is the primary target audience?2.What is the main message of the ad?3.Is the ad successful or unsuccessful?4.If successful, what are the most important features.5.If unsuccessful, what are the features that caused you to either “tune-out” or become “turned-off” to the product.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=e4KjML3SD78

TasteFlavor houses develop new

concoctions for consumer palates

Cultural changes determine desirable tastes

The more respect we have for ethnic dishes, the more spicy food we desire

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lMjlzBU-K-Q

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ExposureOccurs when a stimulus comes within range of someone’s sensory receptors– We can concentrate, ignore, or completely miss stimuli– http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vJG698U2Mvo– Cadillac’s “0 - 60” 5-sec ad.– http://vimeo.com/38920691

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Sensory Thresholds

• Psychophysics– quantitatively investigates the relationship

between physical stimuli and the sensations and perceptions they affect.

• Absolute threshold– Minimum amount of a stimulus that can be

detected by a given sensory receptor 50% of the time.

• Dog whistle

• Billboard with too small print

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Sensory ThresholdsDifferential threshold– j.n.d. (just noticeable difference)

• Do consumers notice smaller quantities? Or price increases?

– Weber’s Law• Amount of change in the original

stimulus required for the change to be noticed depends on its intensity.

• 20 percent difference in price required for “markdowns” to be effective.

Sensory detection abilities decline with age.– Implications of thresholds for

marketers attempting to appeal to the elderly?

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Subliminal Perception

• It is believed that many ads are designed to be perceived unconsciously (below threshold of recognition)

• 1959 Experiment• Subliminal Techniques

– Embeds– Subliminal auditory

perception

Forward Backward

Brief History of Subliminal Ads

• In the mid 1950's, James Vicary used subliminal messaging to make people want popcorn and coke by flashing "eat popcorn" and "drink Coke" very briefly on a screen during a movie. Vicary claimed that the sales of popcorn went up by 57.5% and the sales of Coke rose by 18.1%.

• Many advertisers at the time were interested in Vicary's claims. However, experts were never able to prove that subliminal messages worked, and the controversy that Vicary's report created soon died down until the 1980s ... and Judas Priest.

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2 Families Sue Heavy-Metal Band As Having Driven Sons to Suicide By LARRY ROHTER, Special to The New York Times Published: July 17, 1990

Two days before Christmas in 1985, a pair of young Nevada men shot themselves after listening to albums by the heavy-metal band Judas Priest. Today the rock group and CBS Records went on trial in Washoe County District Court here, accused by the men's families of having driven them to suicide.

As the members of Judas Priest, dressed in dark business suits instead of the dark leather garb they favor on stage, looked on silently, lawyers for the families of Raymond Belknap and James Vance argued that the musicians had placed subliminal messages in several recordings, including the album ''Stained Class,'' thereby inciting the two troubled young men to try to kill themselves. Both the group and its record label are charged in a civil suit with the liability arising from the manufacture and marketing of a faulty product, as well as negligence and intentional and reckless misconduct.

''Judas Priest and CBS pander this stuff to alienated teen-agers,'' said Kenneth McKenna, the lawyer for Mr. Belknap's family. ''The members of the chess club, the math and science majors don't listen to this stuff. It's the dropouts, the drug and alcohol abusers. So our argument is you have a duty to be more cautious when you're dealing with a population susceptible to this stuff.’’

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Subliminal Perception• Most researchers believe that subliminal

techniques are not of much use in marketing– Wide individual differences in threshold levels.– Maintaining homeostasis makes threshold levels “movable.”– Attention shifts decrease probability that people are “attending”

to the stimulus at the moment it’s presented.– Subliminal stimuli have tiny, generalized effects (e.g., visual

priming studies).

• Assuming that some forms of subliminal persuasion may have the desired effect of influencing consumers, do you think the use of these techniques is ethical?

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Attention• The extent to which processing

activity is devoted to a particular stimulus– Competition for our attention:

Consumers are usually in a state of sensory overload

• 3,500 vs. 560 ad info pieces per day• Multi-tasking

– Marketers need to break through the clutter

• Microsoft’s butterfly decals on sidewalks

• Lunesta “butterfly” http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HRUVkZ7DKlc

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Stimulus Selection Factors

We are more likely to notice stimuli that differ from others around them

So, marketers can create “contrast” through:

Size Color Position Novelty

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Perceptual Selection•Psychic economy•Personal Selection Factors– Perceptual vigilance

• Awareness of stimuli relevant to our needs; cocktail-party phenomenon

– Perceptual defense• Threatening stimuli may be

ignored or distorted

– Adaptation• Intensity, duration,

discrimination, frequency of exposure, and relevance

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Perceptual Selection• Stimulus Selection Factors

– Weber’s Law• Differences in size, color, position, & novelty• Eye-tracking studies

– Interpretation: assigned meaning to stimuli• Schemas and Mental Models lead to “top-down” stimulus evaluation

(we see what we expect to see)

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Perceptual Selection: An Example

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vJG698U2Mvo

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Stimulus Organization

• Stimulus interpretation is associated with other related events, sensations, or images

• Gestalt: “the whole is greater than the sum of it parts”

Closure Similarity Figure-ground

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Interpretational Biases

• We often interpret ambiguous stimuli based on our experiences, expectations, and needs– Princeton vs. Dartmouth football game

• Differences in perception about “infractions”• Self-serving nature of perceptual processes

– Planters Fresh Roast (vacuum-packed peanuts package)

• Analogy to fresh-roast coffee produced a “messy” ending.

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Semiotics• Correspondence between signs and symbols are

their role in the assignment of meaning• Marketing messages have three basic components:

- Object- Product on which the message is focused

- Sign- Sensory image that represents the intended meanings

of object

- Interpretant- Meaning derived

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Semiotic Relationships

MarlboroCigarettes

Cowboy RuggedAmerican

Object(Product)

Sign(Sensory Image)

Interpretant(Meaning Derived)Figure 2.3

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Semiotics• Signs are related to

objects in 3 ways:– Icon (physically resembles product)

– Index (connected to product through shared property)

– Symbol (related to a product through conventional or agreed-upon associations)

• Hyper-reality– Marlboro cigarettes =

American frontier spirit– “Heidiland” in Switzerland

Office Space & “Rio Red” stapler: SWINGLINE.COM

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Perceptual Positioning

• Brand perceptions = functional attributes + symbolic attributes

• Perceptual map– Map of where brands are perceived in

consumers’ minds– Company’s own strengths and weaknesses in

comparison with competitors

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Perceptual MapFigure 2.4

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Positioning Strategy

• Marketing mix elements influence the consumer’s interpretation of brand’s meaning

• Brand’s position as a function of:– Lifestyle, price leadership, attributes, product

class, competitors, occasions, users, and quality

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Positioning Strategy

Examples of brand positioningLifestyle Grey Poupon is “high class”

Price leadership Southwest Airlines is “no frills”

Attributes Bounty is “quicker picker upper”

Product class Mazda Miata is sporty convertible

Competitors Northwestern Insurance is the “quiet company

Occasions Wrigley’s gum used when smoking not permitted

Users Levi’s Dockers targeted to men in 20s and 30s

Quality At Ford, “Quality is Job 1”

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Chapter Summary

• Perception is a three-stage process that translates raw stimuli into meaning.

• Products and messages may appeal to our senses.

• The design of a product affects our perception of it.

• We interpret stimuli using learned patterns.

• Marketers use symbols to create meaning.