Perception

First lecture after changing courses was Ruth's lecture. In this lecture there was a speaker in, going through the Havard Referencing system. Second half of this lecture was about Perception. Perception relates to the five senses, sight, smell, taste, sound and texture.  For example, in the food industry a consumer should be able to perceive a product just by looking at it. Food organisations can do this by making the packaging of the product more attractive towards the five senses. David Boody 2008 defines "perception as a active psychological process in which stumili are selected and organised into meaningful patterns." Frances Brassington and Stephen Pettitt 2007 defines "perception represents the way in which individuals analyse, interpret and make sense of incoming information, and is affected by personality, experience and mood."

[Consumer Behaviour, A European Perspective, Prentice Hall, 4th Edition 2010, P118] “Perception is the process by which stimuli are selected organised or interpreted.”  


[David Boddy, Management an introduction, fourth edition, P694] “Perception is the active psychological process in which stimuli are selected and organised into meaningful patterns.”

[Essentials of Marketing, second edition, P80] “Perception represents the way in which individuals analyse, interpret and make sense of incoming information, and is affected by personality, experience and mood”

Perception is a way of achieving an understanding of sensational information. Perception is a hypothesis which human’s believe in and develop an understanding of the information received.

Throughout the lecture Ruth showed us many different adverts on youtube. After looking at these adverts we discussed how the different activities taken place on the advert would attract the five senses. As we was doing this, I decided to look at a packaging for a galaxy chocolate bar, deconstruct the packaging to see how the packaging attracts the five senses.

 The packaging on the above Galaxy bar captures the consumers attention as the packaging uses a chocolate theme, the font used on the packaging is like the name has been written with melted chocolate. The image on the packaging will also grab the consumers attention as the consumer will be able to see a block of the chocolate, so they would know what is inside the packaging. The colours used on the packaging are similar to the actual colours of the product. The text used on the front of the packaging makes the consumers think that the chocolate has a smooth taste to it. All these factors makes the product more appealing to the five senses. The consumer will have had a picture in their heads of what the product will look and taste like. 

Towards the end of the lecture Ruth explained how consumers go through a process before they make the decision to buy a product. She mentioned theorists such as Engel Kollat - the blackwell model and The Howard Sheth Model.