The experiments

In today's lecture we were all asked to get into groups and carry out a perception experiment. The first groups experiment was based on chocolate. They had three different types of chocolate bars present at the front of the class on separate sheets on paper named 1, 2, 3 without their packaging so we wasn't influenced by their brand. The group wanted the class to taste all three chocolate bars and asked us which one we preferred, I personally preferred number 2. After the experiment was finished the group reveled that bar 1 was Tesco Value chocolate, bar 2 was Tesco medium and bar 3 was Tesco finest. however even though I preferred Tesco medium chocolate is was reveled that the majority of the class voted for Tesco finest, this proved that even without the packaging people still prefer the finer things in life :).



The second experiment that was held was with my group we decided to base our experiment on cookies. We had three different brands of cookies these were Maryland own brand, Tesco medium and Tesco value. We removed all packaging and laid out the three different branded cookies onto separate sheets of paper and asked the class to see if they could tell the difference and identify each brand. On the first sheet we placed Tesco medium brand cookies, the second sheet had Maryland own brand cookies and the final sheet Tesco value cookies were placed. A few people participated with our experiment and it turned out that most of them preferred Tesco medium brand cookie rather than the leading brand Maryland cookies.


The third experiment that was held in the class was based on two different types of biscuits, one was McVities digestives and Tesco's own brand digestives. They presented their experiment the same way everyone else did how I found that experiment wasn't a success as most people chose the McVities biscuits as their brand was stamped on the biscuit and this did influence their decision on which biscuit they preferred.



The fourth and final experiment was based on Coke-a-cola, Pepsi and Pepsi Max. Not many people participated on this experiment however, the people who did take part could automatically tell which brand was which as they purchase and drink the brands on a daily bases. I personally thought that they should of used two main brands and one supermarket brand to see if they could tell which drink wouldn't be the popular brands.


Soooooo........
In theory you would think that the most expensive market leading brand would be the product that all the taste testers would of preferred as it is a much more quality brand and more expensive, you would assume that the more you pay for a specific food the better it would taste. However, this was not the case as most of the taste testers for the chocolate and cookies experiment chose the supermarket brand rather the market leading brand. This proves that you don't always have to buy high quality goods to feel satisfied.

Perception & The Decision Making Process

Today's lecture was based on the perception and the decision making process. Everyday will go through the decision making process no matter what they do. However the main focus of this lecture was the different stages a person will go through while making these decisions.

Kotler's buyer decision process is the main model that was used in the lecture to help us understand what stages a customer goes through while purchasing a product or service. Koter assumes that every person goes through each on of these steps.


Kotler's buyer decision process starts with the need of recognition for example a student realises that they have broken their camera. After this step it is then followed by the information research stage, the student gathers up all the information it can find on the different types of cameras that are available to purchase. Once the student is in the shop it evaluates the prices and the difference there is between other cameras this is known as the third step evaluation of alternatives. Once the student has made their decision on what camera to buy then they would go and purchase it.

Here is a a little video that also explains how the buyer decision process works in a different type of way.

The perceived risk model was proposed by the Harvard Business School in the mid 1960s they believed 'behaviour is said to depend upon an individuals subjective perception of the risk inherent in buying a product', so this suggests that a customer buying a product weighs more heavily than it would while making the decision to purchase it. For example, a couple buying a house for the first time is a very important and risky purchase as there is many elements that need to come together like making sure the couple have enough money for the deposit and enough money to pay off the mortgage every month. If this was to go wrong in any sort of way the couple could lose their whole life savings. However if the couple was to buy a dinner set for their new house there would hardly be any risk if they was to purchase the dinner set and there defiantly wouldn't be as much thinking put into it as there was for the purchase of the house.

Laruent & Kapferer (1985) argued that the consumer's level of involvement will be affected by four components these are:

1. Importance & Risk (FTPEPS)

Finance- How much will it cost to purchase a product or service?

Time- How much time will you spend using the product or service? until you lose interest

Performance- How well will it work once you have purchased the product or service?

Ego- How will this purchase make you feel?

Physical- Will it do any harm to you once purchased?

Social- How people will see your item.

So for example, a 21 year old student buying a new phone. depending on what type of phone they would wish to buy this would be at a medium risk however if they would want to buy the lasted cool phone they would be at a high risk as it would cost them at least £300. Time- the student most probably will use their phone everyday therefore it's at a high risk. Performance- medium risk if the phone is one of the lasted phones out the performance would be very good. Ego- medium risk having a new phone would make the student feel good about themselves. Physical- low risk once the student has purchases the phone it will not do any harm to the student. Social- this will have a medium risk as the friends of the student and other people will think that they have a very nice phone and some may even think how on earth they could afford to buy the phone :)

First impressions

As I walk into the room I see two young women aged between 19-21 standing in front of the class, I take my seat and listen to Ruth (my teacher) who asks us what our first impressions are of these two young women. As I analyse them i can't stop myself from being just a little mean, they seemed to me to be quite shy, dress sense okay but not really to my taste, very smiley because when my fellow class mates were shouting out what their first impressions were they just kept on smiling :). After everyone was finished Ruth asked the girls if anyone was right and it turned out that they was, I was quite surprised at this as they even guessed right on what their personalities were like. This to me indicates that first impressions are always important.

After this little task we then moved to another task which was called the egg task, we had to draw any shape we liked then answer questions in the shape like where are you from? Whats your favourite colour? and whats your dream car?

As you can see i drew a star and answered all my questions outside the shape i don't really know why i did that but i guess i thought i would be a little different. It turns out that Ruth said it indicates that I'm being rebellious which is true if I'm totally honest. Once we finished answering these questions we were given somebody else's paper and had to see if we could recognise who's piece of paper it was, the paper i had i could tell straight away who's it was and the person who got mine knew it was me. I was very surprised as I barley knew people in my class.

What is it all about?

Hello and welcome to my blogs! After my year at university hopefully i will have completed all my blogs successfully and given you all the knowledge of what Understanding the Customers involves. Every week i will be giving you an insight to what we are really learning in our lectures

and hopefully then you will see why I LOVE MARKETING so much :) Enjoy!

Now here comes the hard part :)

What is perception?

Have you ever been in a class where one minute your listening to your teacher and then the next your daydreaming of what your going to do after your lesson is finished? Then you snap out of it and realise that you have missed some really important information about your assignment that is due in in like two weeks and tune back in to your lecture!

Everyday people go through stages of information which stimuli are inputted and stored, nevertheless we do not store every piece of information that happens to be present. There are only a small number of stimuli in our every day lives that go noticed. These go through three stages which are Sensation, Attention and Interpretation.

If you click on the link above it will take you to You Tube where this video will show what i think is a great example of what people pay attention to and interpret without the whole picture.

Sensation instantly goes to the response of our sensory receptors which are our eyes, ears, nose, mouth and fingers. Light, colour and sound are also a basic stimuli. Therefore the perception procedure is how these stimuli are selected, organised and interpreted.

Attention is when people focus on certain products and services to which they have been exposed to. People are exposed to so many different advertisements that these days marketers have become very creative with the work that they do, some of these successful adverts create their own visual identity that as soon as a consumer was to see the advert they would know straight away what brand it was for. Take this Hermes advert on the left if you don't look at this advert carefully you would assume that it was someone walking along in the wind however, if you look closely it is a tree dressed in a scarf, glove, coat etc.

Definitions of Perception

"Perception is the process of sensing, selecting and interpreting consumer stimuli in the external world" (Wilkie 1994)

"... is how we see the world around us" (Schiffman & Kanuk 2003)

Here are some useful links to websites that discuss perception:

• http://www.brainyquote.com/words/pe/perception201046.html
• http://www1.sapdesignguild.org/resources/optical_illusions/intro_definition.html
• http://psychology.about.com/od/sensationandperception/ss/perceptproc.htm
• http://www.myarticlearchive.com/articles/9/173.htm
• http://www.learninginfo.org/perception.htm