The idea of perception

Image from http://www.sapdesignguild.org/resources/glossary_color/images/old-young-w.gif

Perception defined by Wilkie is "the process of sensing, selecting and interpreting consumer stimuli in the external world". On a broader scale, Schiffman and Kanuk sum up perception as "how we see the world around us"; this definition shows how perception is an extremely personal interpretation. The image above demonstrates this point...some may straight away see an old lady, others may not be able to see this at all but see a young lady looking over her shoulder.

In todays lecture, we started looking at the differences in how people perceived situations, it was extremely interesting, especially looking at the differences in perceptions between genders. The conclusions of various activities produced results that would suggest women have a lot more in depth perception levels, whereas men are far less analytical of situations, and only make perceptions on what meets the eye. One activity that showed strong trends of the above results was an activity involving allocating appropriate names for paint colour charts. The most prominent result was where the girls called a certain shade "mediteranean sunset" and the boys went for plain "orange". This strengthens the point that girls tend to be a lot more analytical and perceptive than boys.

We also looked at "The black box model" or the model of buyer behaviour. The assumption is that you start with the marketing stimuli, (the 4 P's or "the marketing mix"...product, price, place, and promotion) which is then considered with other external stimuli such as the individuals perception on economics, politics and culture etc. The next stage of the model is where the buyer's characteristics and decision process influences the response, before finally all the inputs are added up to form a final decision.

Above is a diagram to show the marketing mix and how it works. http://www.netmba.com/marketing/mix/

Another theory analysed was that of Kotler and his Buyer Decision Process. His theory states that it is compulsory to pass through 5 stages when making a decision about purchase. The first step is the need for recognition. If the product is not recognised then the process can go no further. The second stage of the model is the information search. This may be done either consciously or subconsciously and is where you decide whether or not the product being considered is good; it can be done by looking back at past experiences and knowledge of the product. The third step is evaluating any alternatives, this would be to decide whether you have got the produc most suited to your wants and needs. The next step is to decide whether or not you want to make the purchase. This may be influenced by factors such as the standard of the product...are you only satisfied with it, or are you delighted by the product? Finally is the post purchase behaviour. This would occur after the purchase has taken place, with the behaviour being affected by how pleased you are with the result of the product.

Although Kotler states how important it is to pass through each and every one of these stages in order to be pleased with the outcome, it is not necessary in the case of impulse buying. Impulse buying is a purchase that you do not want or need to think about before deciding to get it, with impulse buying, the middle three of Kotler's steps are irrelevant.