Perception Experiment

Perception Experiments:

There are many perception experiments which can be carried out. Before carrying out the perception experiment it is important to identify what is going to affect the consumer's perception, for example the five senses which are:

*Sight
*Smell
*Sound
*Taste
*Touch

In class we carried out a perception experiment, which included the groups to test their tastes by eating chocolate/cookies or drinking Coca-Cola.
It was vital that we tested prodcuts which had a similar taste for example Coke and Pepsi. Both products have similar tastes, however they are two different labels.

Results of the Experiment:

Group one, decided to test taste three different branded chocolates. The chocolates were tested by the rest of the class members, they had no knowledge about what brand chocolate they were tasting. With the chocolate experiment the findings concluded to what chocolate tasted better. The students results lead to the most expensive branded chocolate being the better taste wise than the other two. The reason for this is becuase the expensive brand was more indulging taste wise.

Personality & Self- Concept Theory

Factors influencing behaviour of Personality & Self-concept

Personality:

The main factors that influence buyers behaviour are: Taken from Kotler et al

Cultural >> Social >> Personal >> Psycological

Culture >> Reference >> Age & Life cycle >> Motivation
Groups stage Perception
Occupation
Subculture >> Family >> Economic >> Learning Beliefs & Attitudes
circumstances
Lifestyle
Social Class >> Roles & Status >> Personality & Self-concept >>

There are many traits to personality. This includes different characteristics of individuals for example shy, quiet, outgoing and confident.

Theories on Personality:

Hollander's research into Personality

Hollander's research has established four aspects which help define personality.
The aspects are:

*The External aspect- This illustrates how a person interacts with other people

*The Internal aspect- This is a combination of people's values and attitudes

*The Dynamic aspect- This is when people face new situations and how they behave, for example social adjustments

*The Consistent aspect- People's characteristic style

Cattell's Trait Theory of Personality:

This theory looks at the different personality attitudes people have. It illustrates the negative attitudes to the positive. Examples are given below:

Reserved >>>> Outgoing

Less intelligent >>>> More intelligent

Relaxed >>>> Tensed

Serious >>>> Happy-go-lucky

Horney (1945) Theory:

This theory has established that personality develops from the level of anxiety for example felt as being a dependant child. This can lead to turning away from others e.g. isolation, indifference, Detached and going towards others e.g. affection, affiliation, compliant.

Self-concept:

Self concept influences the person's perception of the world around it.

Self concept does not have to reflect reality,for example, a person who is regarded by others as successful may percieve as being a failure.

Solomon 1999, states that self concept represents a belief that a peron holds about his/her attributes, therefore this impacts on how he/she evaluates those qualities. Self concept impacts on indivduals because it is what they think about themselves for example a regular teenager who not believe she is perfect due to the influence of celebrities, teenagers tend to believe a size 0 will help them fit in within the society, this fact influences on the an individuals self concept. Social aspects impact on the younger generation more as they tend to follow the trend. Self concept makes individuals believe what they would like to become and how this will impact on them, therefore the important factors that are involved in this are:

*Self image
*Self esteem
*Ideal self

Self image



Self image impacts people becuase this is how they tend to see themselves, in which they judge the positive and negative attributes about themselves.

These three factors impact on individuals in different ways depending on person to person as everyone is affected by these factors a positive or negative way.

Researchers on Self-concept:

Mead (1934)- states that self concept is formed directly from social experience, the reaction from others and the social & cultural values which are internalised.

Goffman (1959)- states that self-concept is reflected as a social role experience e.g.daughter and wife.

William James (1890)- states that self concept differentiates from social comparisons e.g. family and peers.

Self-concept relates to three main factors which are Self-image, Self-esteem and Ideal-self.

Self image represents the kind of person who we think we are, this involves body image & personality traits.
Ideal self represents the kind of person we would like to be e.g.a successful person
Self esteem represents whether we accept or approve of the our self image that we present to others.

Perceptual Process

Perceptual Process

Today's lecture I learnt about the perception process and what factors are involved within this process. The perception process is a procedure, which consists factors such as people, experiences and objects that
influence humans.
The three main stages of the perceptual process are Sensation, Attention, and Interpretation. Each stage involves a different process and interpreting stimuli. Perception is unique to everyone, as everybody experiences things differently through their senses such as:

*Sight
*Sound
*Touch
*Smell
*Taste

An overview of the perceptual process:

Stimuli

*Sight
*Sound Sensory >>> Attention >>> Interpretation >>> Response >>> Perception
*Touch
*Smell
*Taste

This diagram is taken from Solomon,M.Bamossy (2006)pp37

Kotler's buyer decision process:

This process illustrates five factors, which relate to customers buying habits.
This theory takes place for customers who are usually purchasing a product for the first time. The five factors help customers to decide whether there is a low or high involvement and how the model is impacted by the level of participation in the product category. The five factors are:

*Need recognition
*Information search
*Evaluations of alternatives
*Purchase decision
*Post purchase behaviour

Havard perceived risk model:

This theory was established by the Havard Business School in the 1960s. According to this theory behaviour of customers depends upon an individual's subjective perception of the risk inherent in buying a product, therefore people's tolerance levels relating to risk tends to vary.

Perceptual Set:

The perceptual set enables individuals to develop a persistent and deep rooted way of perceiving, thinking and believing. Vernon 1955, stated that "we get set in our ways".

The perceptual set can be influenced by the marketing strategy. This process works as a selector and interpreter, also it is beneficial as it can help prevent us from problem solving as it focuses on the mind.

The Gestalt Psychology:

The Gestalt principle of 'Closure' illustrates that consumers tend to observe an incomplete picture as complete, the reason for this is because the mind tends to deprive meanings of pictures that are not perceived fully an example is given below:



The principle of 'Similarity' takes place when objects look similar to one another. Consumers tend to collect
together objects, which share similar physical features. An example is given below:



The principle of 'Figure-Ground' is used when elements in a scene are similar in appearance and shape; they can then be grouped
together as a whole. Similar elements such as figure are contrasted with dissimilar elements such as ground in order to give an impression as a whole. An example is given below:



Perceptual mappping:

Perceptual mapping is developed in order to help marketers with their marketing positioning strategy for their products and services. Perceptual maps help organisations identify a marketing postioning strategy as this strategy attempts to visually represent perception of customers or potential customers for a organisation.
When plotting a perceptual map two dimensions are commonly used. A basic perceptual map is shown below:

Diagram: Perceptual Map UK Confectionery Brands



Perceptual maps are plotted on the basis of people's perception, therefore some people may have different opinions about a certain product than others, for example Milktray maybe seen as a quality product to someone, however this may not be percieved as quality to another.

Example ads:

Some of the adverts that represent perception are given below:

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This advert represents the perception of beauty, it shows how images can be transformed and changed.

This advert shows more illusions in advertising by using the Gestalt theory.
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Personality and Self Concept

Personality & Self-Concept:

Definition of Personality:

Today's lecture was about understanding different types of personalities and how every individual is different due to their personality. There are various definitions given to the term 'Personality'. This term means "The quality of being a person; existence as a self-conscious human being; personal identity". (dictionary.com) Solomon, 1999, stated "Personality: a person's unique make up, which consistently influences the way the person responds to his or her environment"
When individuals personalities are discussed, many skills of the person are recognised for example the person is talented in certain things than others. Every person has a different personality which makes them unique in their own way. There is a possibility to have a personality crash as some individuals may not get along due to the persons personality. Personality impacts on a persons behaviour also, as it represents them and their mood in many ways, for example a happy person will be perceived to be more energetic and ready to face challenges as for a dull person will have a boring personality which will not include much energetic activities.
Personality helps individuals understand peoples qualities, weaknesses and strengths which enables people to understand what type of person someone else is. A persons personality represents a lot about them for example whether the person is kind or selfish.

Definition of Self-Concept:
The definition of the term 'Self-concept' is "The idea or mental image one has of oneself and one's strengths, weaknesses, status etc" (dictionary.com) Solomon,1999, stated "Self-concept: the beliefs a person holds about his or her attributes & how he or she evaluates those qualities"


Personality Questionnaires:
In order to discover my strengths and weaknesses about my personality, I have carried out two questionnaires, which tend to show different results. The first test was a personality types test, the results are given below as follow:

Extraverted		Introverted
42%		58%
Sensing		Intuition
58%		42%
Thinking		Feeling
53%		47%
Judging		Perceiving
74%		26%

The second questionnaire result showed that I had 48 points. Therefore, people who had 41 to 50 points were described as "others see you fresh, lively, charming, amusing, pratical, and always interesting; someone who's constantly in the center of attention but sufficiently well-balanced not to let go to their head. They also see you as kind, considerate, and understanding; someone who'll always cheer them up and help them out" (taken from the personality questionnaire) McCrae & Costa (1999): This theory has set out the big five personality types, which are:

- Openness to experience
- Conscientiousness
- Extroversion
- Agreeableness
- Neuroticism

Overall, I believe personality is important to everyone as it helps individuals judge a person according to their personality. A persons personality tells a lot about them which enables people to understand what type of person they are.

Perception

Introducing Perception:

What is Perception?

For today's lecture, we learnt about what perception is. The aim of the lecture was to have an understanding of the process of perception and how it works. According to my understanding of what I have learnt in the lecture I believe perception is a process of attaining awareness or understanding of sensory information. In order to understand the process of perception it is important to know the information of the inputs and outputs beforehand.

Perception has been described by many people in various ways, for example a definition of perception was stated by Wilkie 1994 quoting "Perception is the process of sensing, selecting and interpreting consumer stimuli in the external world".

Example of Perception: Paint exercise

We carried out a paint exercise, which helped us understand what perception is. This exercise was based on different prospectives and views from each group memeber in order to select names for different colours. Each group was given a task sheet which has a specific age group, the aim of my group was to find different names for colours as the colour names had to be selected for a paint company, in order for the customers to get attracted to the name and purchase the product.

The age group my team was given was wealthy retired people. The group members decided to select catchy and attractive names for the colours, which were eye-catching for the customers. Therefore we selected names such as:

• Light Blue: Ice
• Green: Mint
• Mixture of Orange and Yellow: Sunset
• Turquoise: Deep Ocean
  

By selecting names for these colours, the group had to engage their thinking of how retired adults would think and what they would enjoy doing, for example what colours they tend to wear and what sort of activities they do. The team members decided to set a theme for the colour names which was natural outdoors, the reason for this is becuase we believed that many retired adults tend to spend time gardening and going on holidays. Therefore, by selecting a theme made it easier for the team to come up with names.

Example of Perception:

Both the images below represent perception in two different ways:

Perception can be interpretated in many forms. The reason for this is becuase there are many forms of perception for example perception can be percieved visually as well as auditory. A example of a video is given below:

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This video shows the different ways of the 'wordplay'.

Overall, today's lecture activities helped towards ubderstanding the perception and how perception can be represented through auditory or visually.

Introduction: Understanding Consumer Relations

What is Marketing?


Marketing is defined as a communication based process aimed at building a long term relationship with a customer, and also one of the main components in Business Management.

Understanding Consumer Relations is one of the most important factors when considering a marketing strategy.

In today's current climate which is undergoing a recession, marketing has had a direct influence on the growth of the economy. Building a trusted source of consumer relations is a vital step in overcoming many obstacles in a successful marketing strategy.


An Example Approach to Consumer Relations and Marketing:

Today I began my first lecture in understanding the consumer with Ruth Hickmott. We began by starting an activity in which class members had to compare two individual girls which we had not interacted with before. The challenge was to judge both individuals by their outlook and predict what type of personalities they portray, an example is that by the outlook of girl A she gave the class memebers an impression that she was keen in sport, however she was not proactively involved in any sporting activities.

The aim of this exercise was to predict:

• What type of hobbies both girls enjoyed.
• Which part of the country they are from.
• Their age.
• Other interests.

Result:
Most of the answers given by the class memebers were correct.

Conclusion:
We carried out this activity in order to establish what both individuals expressions, this is an example which relates to marketing as it is important to understand the customers needs and wants when they intend to purchase different products.




Thoughts on publishing this blog:

The popularity of blogs has started to gradually grow, as blogs are being created by organisations, students and individuals in order to update recent activities. People have developed a trend by creating their own blog, they tend to use them as personal diaries, in which they record their personal views and opinions about certain topics, activies and hobbies.
The Future Buzz,Media,Marketing & PR (2007-2009)[on line] Available from: http://thefuturebuzz.com/2009/12/10/blogging-stats-facts-data/ states that 60% of bloggers are between the age range of 18-44. Also, it states that 86% of people have been blogging for at least a year and 68% of people have been blogging for more than two years or more.
Therefore, this shows that development of blogs is increasing and becoming a trend.

The main aim of developing this blog is to develop my skills in digital technology, managing communications process and PR for media and events, as this will help me to improve my career prospects on graduation.
I will be using this blog to discuss topics which will be discussed in class for example Perception, Personality & Self-concept and many more.