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Week 2 Lecture Notes

This document summarizes key concepts from a lecture on consumer behavior, including exposure, attention, perception, and comprehension. It discusses how consumers are exposed to stimuli and the factors that influence attention. Perception depends on thresholds of detection and difference. Marketers must consider habituation and find new ways to engage consumers over time. Comprehension involves how consumers interpret messages based on their own knowledge and experiences, which may differ from marketer intent. The summary highlights the importance of moving consumers through the stages of exposure, attention, perception and ensuring the intended message is understood.

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29 views

Week 2 Lecture Notes

This document summarizes key concepts from a lecture on consumer behavior, including exposure, attention, perception, and comprehension. It discusses how consumers are exposed to stimuli and the factors that influence attention. Perception depends on thresholds of detection and difference. Marketers must consider habituation and find new ways to engage consumers over time. Comprehension involves how consumers interpret messages based on their own knowledge and experiences, which may differ from marketer intent. The summary highlights the importance of moving consumers through the stages of exposure, attention, perception and ensuring the intended message is understood.

Uploaded by

anonymoustortoisd
Copyright
© © All Rights Reserved
Available Formats
Download as PDF, TXT or read online on Scribd
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Week 2 Lecture Notes

Tuesday, 1 September 2020 2:57 PM

Key Concepts in Consumer Behaviour:


• Exposure
• Attention
• Perception
• Comprehension

Last week we had looked at what consumer behaviour is and examined how consumption
behaviour is influenced by our motivation, ability, and opportunity(MAO).

This week, we will continue to learn more about the consumer's psychological core. We will
examine how consumers are exposed to, attend to, and perceive information. We will look a
how consumers comprehend the information they perceive, to give meaning to their
consumption experiences.

Exposure = the process by which consumers come into physical contact with a stimulus(e
Ads, salespeople, packages, signs, WOM, prices, brand symbols)

Marketers key goal is to increase the likelihood that you will be exposed to their offerings an
communications.

Exposure is influenced by the consumer's field of vision. The field of vision is the area a pers
can see when their eyes are fixed on one position.

To increase the likelihood of exposure, marketers need to consider the position and placem
of the stimuli, along with the distribution of the stimuli. For eg. Brands pay millions of dollar
a 30-second commercial during the Super Bowl because of the broad exposure it provides.

However, it is important to remember that while marketers work hard to increase your
exposure to their offerings and communications, ultimately the consumer controls what
marketing stimuli they are exposed to. Remember, the consumer holds the remote control.
Consumers actively seek out stimuli they find pleasant or can relate to and avoid stimuli whi
are unpleasant, boring, or threatening.

Attention
Once a consumer has been exposed to a stimuli, marketers then need to determine if the
consumer will pay attention to that information. Attention is the process by which an individ
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Attention
Once a consumer has been exposed to a stimuli, marketers then need to determine if the
consumer will pay attention to that information. Attention is the process by which an individ
allocated part of his or her mental activity to a stimulus.

Properties of Attention:

1) Attention is a limited resource.


a. We have a fixed amount that must be allocated according to need.
2) Attention is selective.
a. We choose what to focus on at any given time. We attend to some things at the
expense of others.
3) Attention can be divided.
a. We allocate our resources to one task and some to another task. Sometimes we
rapidly switch our attention between tasks.
b. Eg. Driving while singing along to the radio; walking while having a conversation
your phone; listening to music while preparing dinner

Habituation = a gradual decrease in responsiveness to a stimuli after repeated exposure to t


stimuli. Essentially, an individual learns to stop responding, or in other words to "tune out" t
stimuli which is no longer biologically relevant.

Marketers can't always hold the consumer's attention because consumers become habituat
to advertisements, packages, service standards and other marketing stimuli.

Habituation is a learned adaption to the repeated presentation of a stimulus, not a reductio


sensory or motor ability.
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It is very important for marketers to think of new and exciting ways to attact and
maintain consumers' attention, because people habituate or learn to "tune out" to
non-essential stimuli over time so they can focus on other information requiring
their attention.

How can marketers attract and try to keep consumers attention?


1) Make the stimuli personally relevant - make sure that the offering appeals to
the consumers' individual needs, values, emotions, goals
2) Make the stimuli pleasant - using attractive models, catchy songs
3) Make the stimuli surprising
4) Make the stimuli easy to process

Perception
Once a piece of stimuli has attracted the consumer's attention, it will be perceived
by their senses. Perception occurs when stimuli are registered by one of our five
senses: sight, sound, taste, smell, and touch. Attention grabbing stimuli are more
likely to be perceived by your senses.

When do we perceive stimuli?


We perceive stimuli when it falls within our absolute threshold of detection and
when there is just a noticeable difference.

Absolute threshold = the point at which we can detect the difference between
"something" and "nothing"

The Just.Noticeable.Difference(J.N.D) = the intensity difference needed between


two stimuli before people can perceive that the stimuli are different; it is the
amount something must be changed in order for a difference to be noticeable.
• For eg. suppose you need a haircut. You visit your hairdresser and ask her to
trim the ends of your hair. She starts cutting your hair while you are busy
reading a magazine. When she is finished she asks you "How do you like it?",
you look up into the mirror in surprise and respond "Did you even cut my
hair, it looks exactly the same as before!". She says "Yes" and points to the
amount something must be changed in order for a difference to be noticeable.
• For eg. suppose you need a haircut. You visit your hairdresser and ask her to
trim the ends of your hair. She starts cutting your hair while you are busy
reading a magazine. When she is finished she asks you "How do you like it?",
you look up into the mirror in surprise and respond "Did you even cut my
hair, it looks exactly the same as before!". She says "Yes" and points to the
hair clippings on the floor which are about the length of cupcake sprinkles
(she cut 0.5 cm off the length of your hair). While technically your hair is
shorter than it was before you walked into the hair salon, you did not notice
this difference because the 0.5 cm cut did not hit your difference threshold.
• In 1830s, a German scientist called Ernst Weber discovered that the JND was
relative to the intensity of the first stimulus. The stronger the initial stimulus,
the greater the additional intensity required for the second stimulus to be
perceived as different(Weber's law). For eg. Weber's law indicates that a $5
increase in price on a $10 product would be more noticeable than $5 on a
$100 product. Or a one kilo change would be easier to detect in a 3 kilo bag
of potatoes than a 20 kilo bag.

Why is the differential threshold so important to marketers?


• Concealing negative changes
○ Sometimes brands have to make negative changes to their products(eg.
Reduce the product size, increase the price, reduce product quality) to
cut costs.
○ A critical question therefore is how much a product's price can be
increased or by how much a product's size or quality can be
reduced(eg. 20%, 15%, or 5%?) so that the change can stay "under-the-
radar" and consumers will not notice this unfavourable difference.
• Highlighting positive changes
○ Not all changes are negative! Sometimes brands make positive changes
and improvements to their products and services. In this case, they
need to consider how big the change should be to ensure it gets
noticed by consumers. Brands also sometimes change their packaging
or product logo to keep consumers interested and to prevent boredom.
They need to ensure that this positive change is big enough to be
detected by consumers but that the brand is still recognisable.

How do we perceive stimuli?


We do not experience each stimulus from the environment as a discrete and
isolated sensation. Instead, we organise and integrate it in the context of other
things around it. This process is called perceptual organisation, and involves a
higher order, more meaningful level of processing.

Comprehension = involves interpreting and giving meaning to the message the


consumer perceives in light of their prior knowledge.

Marketers need to know if:


1) The marketing message has been interpreted as it was intended to be? -->
Comprehension = involves interpreting and giving meaning to the message the
consumer perceives in light of their prior knowledge.

Marketers need to know if:


1) The marketing message has been interpreted as it was intended to be? -->
objective comprehension
2) Has the consumer attached their own different or additional meanings to the
message? --> subjective comprehension
3) Has the message been incorrectly construed and interpreted? -->
Miscomprehension occurs when the consumer's subjective comprehension is
wrong
Comprehension is affected by MAO. Consumers may miscomprehend a message
when motivation is low or they are distracted(opportunity is low).
Miscomprehension is reduced as the consumer's expertise and experience
increases.

Subliminal Perception: It is based on the idea that people can perceive stimuli
without being consciously aware of the stimuli. The logic is that if people can
perceive information outside their awareness, then perhaps marketers can "hide"
images or subtly inset coded messages in a standard ad to try to affect the
consumer's behaviour (without the consumer even realising they have seen the
hidden message).

Module Summary:
1) For a marketing stimuli to have an impact the consumer must first be
exposed to it, allocate attention to it, and perceive it with their senses.
2) Perception is influenced by the absolute threshold and the JND.
3) Consumers become habituated to marketing stimuli. Marketers must think of
new and exciting ways to keep consumers attention over time.
4) Consumers don't always interpret messages and information as it was
intended to be interpreted. Sometimes markets take advantage of
consumer's subjective comprehension tendencies.

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