Consumer Behavior
Perception
Outline
• Definition of perception
• Sensation
– Absolute and differential thresholds
– Consumer behavior applications
• Attention
– Selective and intensive aspects of attention
– Consumer behavior applications
• Comprehension
– Categorization and inference making
– Schemas and comprehension
– Consumer behavior applications
Consumer Behavior
Perception
Perception
the process by which stimuli in the external,
physical world are translated into internal,
mental representations;
three stages:
• sensation: registering stimuli through the five senses
(vision, sound, taste, smell, touch);
• attention: allocating processing resources to certain
stimuli;
• comprehension: interpreting stimuli that have been
attended to;
Consumer Behavior
Perception
Sensation
• sensation refers to the process of registering external
stimuli through the sensory receptors (i.e., the sense
organs);
• sensation is subject to sensory thresholds:
– absolute thresholds: minimum amount of stimulation
or smallest intensity of a stimulus that can be detected
by a sensory receptor (cf. subliminal perception);
– differential thresholds: minimum amount of change
in stimulation or the smallest difference between two
stimuli that can be detected by a sensory receptor (also
called the just noticeable difference or jnd);
Consumer Behavior
Perception
Subliminal persuasion
• notion that certain stimuli, even if presented below the
threshold of conscious awareness, may influence
consumers’ behavior subconsciously;
• types of subliminal stimuli:
– very briefly (tachistoscopically) presented visual stimuli
– subaudible messages
– embedded stimuli
• little evidence of direct behavioral effects and enormous
practical difficulties in applying these principles in typical
marketing contexts (due to threshold differences, lack of
control, masking by supraliminal material, etc.);
Consumer Behavior
Perception
Differential thresholds and Weber’s law
• according to Weber’s law, the greater the intensity of a
stimulus, the more the stimulus has to change for a change
to be noticed; thus,
jnd = k x I
where jnd is the just noticeable difference, I is the intensity
of the stimulus, and k is a constant that differs for different
sensory modalities;
• applications:
– marketers want consumers to notice a change
– marketers do not want consumers to notice a change;
Consumer Behavior
Perception
Attention
the allocation of processing capacity to a
stimulus;
two aspects of attention:
• selective aspect: question of which stimuli are
selected for processing;
• intensive aspect: question of how much
processing capacity is allocated to a stimulus;
Consumer Behavior
Perception
In-class exercise:
Attention-getting marketing stimuli
During one of your shopping excursions (e.g.,
a trip to the grocery store, a mall visit),
carefully observe all the marketing stimuli
present in the store environment (products,
ads, promotions, etc.) and think about what
makes (some of) them attention-getting. List
at least five characteristics that are attentiongetting for you.
Consumer Behavior
Perception
Selective aspect of attention
metaphor of attention as a filter screening informational
inputs for further processing; two sets of factors influence
selectivity:
• external factors: aspects of a stimulus that help it break through the
clutter (environmental prominence);
arousal potential of a stimulus is a function of:
 psychophysical properties
 ecological properties
 collative properties
• internal factors:
 cognitive (e.g., prior knowledge),
 affective (e.g., mood),
 motivational (e.g., involvement)
Consumer Behavior
Perception
Intensive aspect of attention
• continuum of levels of attention ranging from
preconscious to focal;
• intensity of attention is strongly influenced by
motivational factors (cf. Celsi and Olson);
• some tasks require more attention than others:
– controlled processes: processes that aren’t highly
practiced and require attention and conscious control;
– automatic processes: processes that are highly
practiced and require no or little attention and conscious
control;
Consumer Behavior
Perception
Comprehension
• process of interpretation, or assignment of meaning, to a
stimulus;
• comprehension if often conceptualized as varying on a
continuum ranging from superficial or cursory to thorough
or detailed; motivational factors are an important influence
on the depth or elaborateness of processing (cf. Celsi and
Olson);
• two important steps are involved in comprehension:
– categorization
– inference making
Consumer Behavior
Perception
Involvement, attention and comprehension
(Celsi and Olson)
•
•
•
•
•
•
Ss were asked to look at 6 ads for 2 tennis shoes, racquets, and strings as if
they were seeing them in a magazine;
Ss in the high situational involvement (SI) condition were told that they could
win one of the products described in the ads; Ss in the low SI condition were
told nothing;
Ss were classified into low, moderate, and high intrinsic involvement (II)
conditions based on their scores on the Personal Involvement Inventory for
tennis;
Ss looked at two ads for, say, tennis shoes and then engaged in a thought
listing task, etc.;
ad processing time was used as a measure of attention; proportion of productrelated thoughts as a measure of focus of attention; number of cognitive
responses as a measure of comprehension effort; and inferential thoughts as a
measure of elaboration;
at the end, domain knowledge was assessed with a paper-and-pencil test;
Consumer Behavior
Perception
Involvement, attention, and comprehension (cont’d)
time
% product
thoughts
Attention
Focus of
attention
high SI
high SI
low SI
low SI
II
low moderate high
Comprehension
effort
total thoughts
high SI
low SI
low moderate high
II
low moderate high
% product
inferences
Elaboration
II
high SI
low SI
low moderate high
II
Consumer Behavior
Perception
Top-down vs. bottom-up processing
• comprehension is influenced both by what people
already know about a stimulus and by the actual
characteristics of the stimulus:
– top-down (or theory-driven) processing: instances
where comprehension is strongly influenced by
people’s prior knowledge of the stimulus;
– bottom-up (or data-driven) processing: instances
where comprehension is heavily influenced by the
actual characteristics of the stimulus;
• top-down processing depends on the schemas that
are activated during perception;
Consumer Behavior
Perception
Schemas
• schemas are cognitive structures that represent
people’s knowledge about people, objects, or
events:
– person schemas
– object schemas
– event schemas (or scripts)
• schemas facilitate theory-driven processing, and
schema-based comprehension emphasizes the
constructive nature of perception;
Consumer Behavior
Perception
The role of schemas in comprehension
• schemas affect the encoding and retrieval of
information; often, there is a bias toward
perceiving only schema-consistent information,
although the schema may also point to schemainconsistent information;
• schemas allow people to draw inferences
(which may be misleading; see Harris);
• schemas may be helpful in evaluating new
stimuli (i.e., by categorizing them and then
referring to the category affect to make the
judgment; see Sujan);
Consumer Behavior
Perception
Pragmatic implication in advertising
(Harris)
• ads may lead consumers to believe something that is neither explicitly
stated nor logically implied;
• 180 Ss listened to 20 fictional ads on a tape recorder; in 10 ads a
critical claim was directly asserted (e.g., taking Eradicold Pills will get
you through a whole winter without colds), in 10 it was pragmatically
implied (e.g., get through the winter without colds; take Eradicold
Pills);
• Ss were asked to rate two test sentences per commercial as true, false,
or of indeterminate truth value, based on what they had heard (one was
the critical test sentence, the other a false or indeterminate filler); the
immediate group provided these ratings after each commercial, the
concurrent group received a written transcript of each ad, and the
delayed group heard all the ads and then provided ratings;
• half of the Ss were specifically warned about pragmatic implication;
Consumer Behavior
Perception
Listerine commercial
“Wouldn’t it be great,” asks the mother, “if you could
make him coldproof? Well, you can’t. Nothing can
do that. [Boy sneezes.] But there is something that
you can do that may help. Have him gargle with
Listerine Antiseptic. Listerine can’t promise to keep
him coldfree, but it may help him fight off colds.
During the cold-catching season, have him gargle
twice a day with full-strength Listerine. Watch his
diet, see he gets plenty of sleep, and there’s a good
chance he’ll have fewer colds, milder colds this year.”
Consumer Behavior
Perception
• In the assertion condition, Ss were told:
Taking Eradicold pills will get you through a whole
winter without colds.
• In the implication condition, Ss were told:
Get through the winter without colds. Take Eradicold
pills.
• The test sentence was:
If you take Eradicold pills as directed, you will not have
colds this winter.
Consumer Behavior
Perception
Pragmatic implication (cont’d)
Results:
• using the number of statements rated as true as the dependent variable,
temporal condition interacted with claim type and instruction type;
Type of claim
Temporal condition
Immediate
No instructions
Instructions
Concurrent
No instructions
Instructions
Delayed
No instructions
Instructions
Assertion
Implication
8.80
7.27
7.80
5.33
9.67
8.10
8.17
5.40
8.13
8.10
8.07
7.43
• one of the ads was for Listerine; the number of trues overall was 74
and 83 out of 90 for implications and assertions, respectively;
Consumer Behavior
Perception
Corrective advertising
(Wilkie, McNeill, & Mazis)
• in the 1970s the FTC ruled that Warner-Lambert’s 50-year old
campaign for Listerine mouthwash had been deceiving customers into
thinking that Listerine was able to prevent sore throats and colds or to
lessen their severity;
• the company was ordered to run a corrective advertising campaign,
mostly on TV, for 16 months at a cost of $10 million; the argument
that corrective advertising violates the advertiser’s First Amendment
rights was rejected by the courts;
• interestingly, after the corrective campaign was run, 42% of Listerine
users still believed that mouthwash was being advertised as a remedy
for sore throats and colds, and 57% of users rated cold and sore throat
effectiveness as a key attribute in purchasing the brand;
Consumer Behavior
Perception
In-class exercise: Inferences
Collect some examples of brand names, brand
symbols, package designs, product features,
advertising claims (e.g., about nutritional
content), promotional tactics, etc. that invite
consumers to draw inferences about a product.
Which of these inferences may not accurately
characterize the product in question and could
therefore be called misleading?
Consumer Behavior
Perception
Category-based vs. attribute-based
evaluative processing (Sujan)
• Ss were asked to look at a simulated print ad and form an
impression of the advertised product;
• the product was referred to as either a 35mm SLR camera
or a 110 camera and described with attributes that were
typical of these types of cameras; Ss received information
that was either consistent with (match) or discrepant from
(mismatch) category knowledge;
• a 15-item multiple-choice test was used to classify Ss as
expert or novice consumers;
• cognitive responses, response times, and product
evaluations served as dependent variables;
Consumer Behavior
Perception
Category-based vs. attribute-based
evaluative processing (cont’d)
# of attributeoriented thoughts
# of categorization
thoughts
impression
formation time
experts
novices
experts
novices
match mismatch
novices
experts
match mismatch
match
mismatch
• experts preferred the description of the 35mm SLR camera (regardless
of label) ;
• novices rated the camera that was labeled 35mm SLR more positively
(regardless of features);