Perception Experiment

Taste Test

The class did a range of experiments to test a variety of things. The primary theme was to see if factors other than taste really affect our purchase decisions or whether it was other perceived associations that influence our purchase decisions e.g. a higher price = better taste = purchase. The methodology behind one of these experiments involved giving people a range of 3 biscuits, one biscuit being a very cheap brand, another being a middle of the road brand and the third being a market leading brand and asking them to indicate their preference without knowing the brand they were tasting. In theory the most expensive market leading brand would be the most favoured as we assume the higher price, superior packaging and marketing would equal a better tasting, higher quality biscuit. However without these cues would the taste testers select the market leading brand as their most preffered?

Results

No! Surprisingly the participants chose the middle of the road brand. This would suggest that participants do not always actually prefer the taste of market leading brands but in fact it is the price and the way the brand is marketed that tells them it tastes better.

Evaluation

The reality is this test actually proves very little. What we should have done is show everyone the products, tell them the price and let them see the packaging and then, without tasting, ask them to say which they think they would prefer the taste of. Then we would get them to taste the products and indicate their preference without knowing which brand is which and see if the results correlate. If the majority say they think they would prefer the market leader but they then select the middle of the road brand after tasting we can suggest that factors other than taste can influence our choice of biscuit (given that we have an adeuquate sample size).

Here is a classic example of how marketing can outweigh taste when it comes to purchasing a product.



Here the individual says he prefers the leading brand, Coke. However when all variables are removed and only taste remains he selects Pepsi as the brand he actually prefers.

Perception and the Decision Making Process

Just to get you warmed up, here is a video demonstrating how something as simple as buying a bag of crisps (or as our colonial cousins would say "chips") for the family involves a decision process.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yx-Z5hpZh48

Kotlers Buyer Decision Process

Here is a diagram of Kotlers buyer decision process. In the yellow box is the model and in the white box is the customers buyer decision process when purchasing a laptop.




Here is a video that further explains the model in a practical way.




Lets try another example.

1. You feel hungry and are craving a sugary snack - Need recognition

2.You go into a shop and look at all the chocolate bars, sweets and fizzy drinks - Information search

3.You look at a chomp and think is this filling enough? Then you decide to go for a twirl as it is bigger and will probably fill you up for a bit - Evaluation of alternatives

4.You see that the twirl is 60p! You think its a bit expensive and that they are ripping you off a bit but you are hungry and decide that it's only 60p after all so you buy it. - Purhcase Decision

5.You can't quite finish the twirl as it is a but sickly and you weren't as hungry as you thought you were, you wish you saved yourself 50p and went for the chomp instead. - Postpurchase Behavior

Kotler assumes that every purchase follows this model, they follow every step from need recognition to post purchase behavior. However is this really the case? Do we really follow the same steps, taking the same amount of time and effort to buy a brand new car as we do for a chocolate bar? Of course we don't.

Perceived Risk Model

The Harvard Business School suggest an individuals evaluation of the risk involved in buying a product weighs heavily on their purchase decision. If you had to take a bullet from a gun in the chest and had a choice of 5 bullet proof vests to buy to protect yourself then you will probably spend a great deal of time considering which one you are going to purchase. However if you need a new jumper to play football in and have a choice of 5 to buy, you probably wont spend anywhere near as much time considering the purchase. Why? One presents a huge element of risk and serious consequences if a wrong decision is made where as the other presents no real risk or consequences as a result of the decision.






But there is more than one type of risk.



Laurent & Kapferer - Measuring Involvement

There are 4 components that influence a consumers level of involvement, the first being importance and risk.

This can be broken down into 6 factors:

Finance - How much does it costs in relation to how much you earn/have.
Time - How much time are you going to spend using the item?
Performance - How well does it work?
Ego - How it makes you feel.
Physical - Can it harm you?
Social - How others perceive your purchase of the item.

Lets try an example, a 20 year old student man is thinking about buying a new car:

Finance - High risk, it will probably leave him broke once he has brought the car.
Time - High risk, he is going to spend a considerable amount of time driving the car.
Performance - Medium risk, whilst he wants a fast car, he is aware that this is not
realisitic for him and so performance is not as important as other
factors.
Ego - Medium risk, he wants to feel good driving his new car but no one his age has
the perfect car so he is not too fussed.
Physical - Low risk, the car is unlikely to cause him any real harm if he drives it
sensibly so he is not really to worried.
Social - Medium risk, he see's the car as more of a practical purchase but still
wants to look cool for the ladies, he doesn't want them to be embarresed
about riding in his car

As you can see different factors are either higher or lower risk given his current situation. Performance is not that important as he knows he does not have the money to buy a car that will take turns well and accelerate fast. If the same man had to purchase a pair of shoes then certain factors (such as social and ego) would have more risk attatched to them and others such as finance would have less, a different product will have different levels of risk for different factors. It should also be noted that a 40 year old working woman would attatch different levels of risk to each factor than the 20 year old man would. Different people + Different products = a huge variety in importance and risk levels.

Perceptual Maps

Perceptual maps provide an excellent visual indicator of peoples opinions and perceptions on a product in relation to the competition.



In the above example, the customer is being asked to plot a product name on a graph with finance and performance in mind, in this case how economical the product is and how it makes the customers hair look. After completing the graph with several products evaluated you can see exactly where your product stands against the competition based upon these factors. This gives you an excellent idea of the areas you need to work on.

For example if you work for Organics then you should realise that whilst the quality of your product is excellent, consumers are being put off by the less economical price. Whilst they are a very useful tool, many perceptual maps need to be completed in order for them to provide strong information. A drawback of the perceptual map is it can only be viewed on a customer by customer basis unless you have the relevant equipment and software to converge the information into a graph.

Thanks for reading part 3 of my Blog, part 4 coming soon!

Perception

Perception. Wilkie (1994) suggests "perception is the process of sensing selecting and interpreting consumer stimuli in the external world". Shifmann & Kanuck suggest perception is simply how we see the world around us. I prefer to think of it as, what we see and what we think of it. In other words if I see a green apple with a dew drop on it, I may perceive that as a nice, tasty snack. However I may not like apples, in which case I may see it as a horrible, sour, unwanted piece of food. If two people see a chocolate bar, one may perceive it as a lovely treat while the other may see it as fattening and unhealthy. Therefore perception is not just what wee see, hear, taste, smell and touch but how we interpret and analyse this information.



The Howard-Sheth theory of buyer behavior highlights the importance of perceptual reaction in the buying process.



Here is a link to Howard J,Sheth J. A Theory of Buyer Behaviour

http://www.jagsheth.net/docs/A%20Theory%20of%20Buyer%20Behavior2.pdf

Here is a page taken from the above website that contains a quick summary of buyer behaviour by Howard J, Sheth J.



How Much Can We Really Perceive?

Bander R, and Grinder J (1980) created the Neuoro Linguistic Programming model as seen below.



It suggests that we take in 2,000,000 bits of sensory information and we then reduce that to 134 bits in our internal re-presentation, in other words humans can sense a great deal of information but can process only a fraction of this information into a thought or an idea.

Here is a perceptual awareness test that should help understand this theory.




Paint Excercise


We were asked to create a brand and product names for a range of 9 paints. The idea was to try and make these paints as appealing as possible to a particular target group, for example young urban professionals or well off retired people. This task demonstrates perception rather well as it became obvious that well off retired people would perceive a light blue colour very differently to young urban professionals. Therefore the marketing strategy for these two groups needs to be very different and take into account how the specific target groups will perceive the colours.

Our group was given the unenviable task of marketing our paints to well off retired people, the results are below.



We decided that a nature theme would appeal to the well off retired people as we felt that people of retirement age appreciate the beauty of nature and want to live in a calming, relaxing environment.

First Lecture - Judging and Perceiving

Hello my marketing buddies. I want to assure you that despite the fact I shall be achieving the highest possible marks in every assignment, I will not look down upon you, pity you, nor give you any help or advice what so ever. However, in the unlikely event that I am struggling myself, I expect you to help me willingly and with a smile.

Ruth, I will do my very best to bribe and coerce you into giving me top marks, though I will do the work to the best of my ability just in case that strategy fails.

Now, on to the subject matter itself.

Judging the Randoms

I consider myself a rather judgemental person, however when asked to make assumptions about 2 people standing right in front of me, I found it to be quite a challenge. My instincts, or rather my learned ability to judge based on my previous experience told me quite a lot, however I found myself denying the impulse to go with these instincts and approach the task from a more analytical point of view. As a result I didn't come up with to many assumed characteristics for the 2 young women, other than that they were young women of course! To my surprise many of the students managed to accurately predict several things about the volunteers, such as their music preferences, their personality quirks and even where they were born (or there abouts).

This strongly suggests that while our pre-defined categories we have for people are not always 100%, they can give a good indication of what kind of people we are actually dealing with.

After drastically lowering the volunteers self esteem, we then moved on to the egg task. I like eggs, they are high in protein and can taste good, but that's neither here nor there. We were asked to draw a shape on a large piece of paper and told any shape would do. Some people went for big triangles, others went for little squares, I personally went for a sheep with no legs.

We were then asked a series of questions. Do we have any brothers or sisters? Whats our favourite film? After answering these questions we were then given someone else's piece of paper and based upon what they had drawn and written, we were asked to deduce who's piece of paper sat in front of us. Once again I was surprised to learn that several people, including myself, were able to predict who's piece of paper we had.

So, how does this relate to understanding the customer?

What I took from the lesson with Ruth is that with a little bit of information about people, we can find out with some degree of accuracy a lot more about them. This information can be put to great use. It can be used to target specific people with advertising about specific products and services that there is a good chance of them buying. This method can be very effective, not only does it increases the chance of the potential customer buying the product but In doing so it also reduces your costs. If 10 out of 100 people will buy your product if they are made aware of it then why waste time with the other 90?

Amazon.com gives us a great example of this strategy. Upon purchasing any item, amazon comes up with a list of other items they feel you would be interested in based upon your purchase. Here's an example:

Based upon one piece of information, in this case the purchase of a CD, Amazon is able to recommend other products to me that I am likely to buy. By Judging me and making a perception of the style of music I like they are dramatically increasing the chance that I will purchase from them again by advertising to me as an individual with a product range specific to me.

That's all of my thoughts on the lecture for now, I look forward to the next one!